A tale of two hospitals: One is overburdened, the other struggling to perform
Srinagar: If one is to see how burdened a doctor can be, or for that matter, a hospital, a visit to Valley’s only maternity care hospital, Lalla Ded Hospital is a must.
The hospital, on average performs 45 Lower segment Caesarean section (LSCS) and 33 normal deliveries, with on average only 14 doctors available to do the job, out of which only a few are tasked to perform such procedures, enough to make SKIMS like institution to blush.
The data accessed by the ‘Kashmir Vision’ reveals that for the month of May this year, almost 1438 LSCS were performed, which makes it 47 LSCS per day, with the only strength of 14 doctors, which includes head of the departments, consultants and Post Graduate students.
Contrarily, SKIMS maternity care, while it is flourishing in terms of manpower and has got a staff strength of 14 Senior Residents, 6 Consultants and around 10 Post Graduates, but with monthly output at of only 120 deliveries per month.
For June this year, Lalla Ded hospital performed 1338 LSCS, which is a 100 less to what was in the month of May; the average here also is more than 44 such procedures per day.
Notably, the non availability of equipments like Cardiotocography (CTG) at valley’s premier hospital, SKIMS was reported by ‘Kashmir Vision’—the equipment which is termed as a must at any maternity care hospital.
While, the SKIMS, being the top health institution of the State is yet to get such a machinery, Lalla Ded hospital is performed 1939 CTG tests for the month of May and 1554 for the month of June.
A little processing of the data reveals, that Lalla Ded hospital performed 64 CTGs per day in the month of May, and 51 CTGs were performed per day in the month of June. Pertinent to mention, SKIMS referrers patients in need of a CTG to Lalla Ded and also in case of any complications.
What is interesting is that Lalla Ded hospital, in just 24 hours performed 42 CTGs from the morning of 25 July till the morning of 26 July. During the same time period, the hospital performed 47 LSCS, admitted 122 patients, witnessed a rush of 847 OPD patients and carried out 35 normal deliveries and what was available was a team (unit) of 14 doctors performing different tasks.
Further, while the SKIMS is still struggling to get the USG installed, which was made available after this newspaper carried a series of stories regarding the ill functioning of SKIMS maternity care hospital, Lalla Ded performs around 160 USGs per day and performed 176 USGs in 24 hours mentioned earlier.
For the month of May, 5006 USGs were performed (which is more than 166 USGs per day) and for the month of June, 4578 USGs were performed (which is more than 152 USGs per day.)
“To tackle with the rush we have 6 units of doctors on the job, on average there are 14 doctors in every unit comprising of heads of the departments, consultants and PG students,” said Medical Superintend of Lalla Ded, Dr Shabir Siddiqui.
The story does not end there, if the one unit is handling the emergency cases, there is one more team which is functioning at the OPD and other sections, “doctors do not actually rest, if the one unit is functioning in the emergency today, it will have to run some other section tomorrow,” he added.
With the ill functioning of SKIMS maternity care, where from for small tests, a patient is referred to Lalla Ded, it is only adding to the overload and overburden to the already burdened hospital and stressed health workers.
Irfan Tramboo
