Ludhiana civil hospital toilets shut for renovation, patients suffer

Toilets at the civil hospital here have been closed for over four months for renovation, troubling patients and their attendants. Besides renovation, sewerage work has also been going on.
According to senior medical officer (SMO), Dr Harpreet Singh, the toilets won’t be opened before January. “The renovation work is going on under the MP LAD programme and will be completed by January,” he said.
There is only one functional toilet in the hospital building which is a common facility for men and women in the trauma ward. The adjacent mother and child hospital also has one toilet functional. Male patients and attendants can be seen urinating in the bushes nearby around the blood bank or the mortuary.
Doctors also have to go to the toilet in the mother and child section of the hospital. For the hospital’s renovation, MP Sanjeev Arora has issued funds under the MP LAD scheme.
“I have been waiting here for around an hour. There is no toilet here. I will have to go the trauma ward or the MCH. May be in the time it will take, I will miss my number,” said Manjeet, a patient visiting the OPD.
In a recent visit to hospital, health minister Dr Balbir Singh had also said that the renovation work would be complete by January.
The renovation work includes sewage, painting and tile work in the civil hospital building. The renovation project also includes other projects on the hospital premises.
The toilets in the courtyard of the mother and child section of the hospital are also shut. A few months ago, the then district commissioner had pulled up the officials concerned for the locked toilets. He had issued direction to open the same within a week.
The health minister has also visited the hospital twice in past five months. Despite repeated promises of developing the facility at par with private hospitals, not much appears to have changed, said an elderly man in the hospital.
Nilesh Kumar, a patient in the OPD ward of the hospital, said such works shouldn’t take months. “Toilet is a basic facility that every establishment should have. The renovation work here at the civil hospital should be sped up as patients are being inconvenienced,” he said.