FREE LEGAL AID COMMITTEE, JAMSHEDPUR Vs. MAHATAMA GANDHI MEMORIAL MEDICAL COLLEGE, HOSPITAL SAKCHI, JAMSHEDPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Pursuant to our Order dated 12.1.1987 the District Judge, Jamshedpur inspected the Mahatama Gandhi Memorial Medical College Hospital, Sakchi and has submitted a report to us. A perusal of the report shows beyond a shadow of doubt that the state of the hospital is deplorable and unworthy of being called a General Hospital or a Medical College Hospital. What is worse is that it is named after the Father of the Nation. Some of the facts noticed by the District Judge may be mentioned by us here. The District Judge found that 19 posts of doctors were vacant, including those of professors of Medicine, Obst. & Gynaecology, E.N.T., Skin and Venereal Diseases. Both the posts sanctioned for the T.B. Clinic were vacant. No post of Professor was sanctioned for the departments of Anaesthesiology and Radiology. 28 posts of Staff Nurses and 10 posts of Nursing Sisters were also vacant. The only ambulance available for the Hospital was not capable of being used because there was only one driver and the remaining posts of drivers were vacant. Out of 17 Oxygen Cylinders, seven were empty. There was no intensive care unit at all. Though there were five departments said to be functioning, there was only one one ration theatre. There was no O.T. Assistant. O.T. Sister or O.T. attendant in the operation theatre. For several days Ether was not available and attendants of patients were asked to bring Ether from the open market. The sterilizer available to the staff nurses was out of order. The telephone was not working. There was no means of inter-communications in the hospital. The only lift was out of order. The wards were not clean. Sanitary-wares had turned black. Wash basins were in a miserable condition. Apart from that they also appeared to be out of use. Taps were broken and dry. The condition of the store-room was miserable, so was the case with the kitchen. The electric fittings were either broken or rusted or out of order. Switch boards were in poor condition. Some of them were hanging from the walls. In one of the rooms of the T.B. Wards, there was no electric light at all.

(2.) Most of the patients complained that they were being asked to purchase the medicine from out-side, as the quality and quantity of the medicine given to the hospital was poor.

(3.) In the prisoners' ward it was found that one of the prisoners was chained to his bed. It appears that one of the patients in the prisoners' ward died of T.B. after being admitted to the hospital as there was no arrangement for treating prisoners suffering from T.B.