Francis checks pulse of ailing Hospicio

Incidentally, some of the problems that were brought to the notice of D’Souza were the same old issues that were highlighted during the visit to the hospital by his predecessor Laxmikant Parsekar, indicating that nothing has changed in the hospital during the last two years.
D’Souza, who was accompanied by Fisheries Minister Avertano Furtado, saw for himself how an ailing woman on a stretcher was stranded on the ground floor due to the non-functioning lift. He came across a host of problems plaguing Hospicio, right from the non-functioning ACs and lifts to patients using their private linen in the hospital during his maiden visit to the hospital.
Hospicio doctors, however, came in for special praise from the Health Minister, saying the doctors are rendering yeoman service despite being ‘stretched out” for want of manpower. “I am not ready to accept that Hospicio is not functioning. The statistics in the OPD and the optimum utilisation of the capacity are pointers that the hospital is functioning to its optimum capacity. The doctors are doing excellent work. They are all stretched out because of vacancies in the post of medical officers, surgeons, radiologist etc. But the system is overloaded because the patients are more than what the hospital can accommodate. When we allow the system to be overloaded, we blame the doctors, nurses and the servants”, he said.
The Health Minister has mooted both long and short term measures to tide over the situation. The long term measures included expediting work on the new district hospital, which he said would be commissioned within two years and at a cost of Rs 150 crore. Outlining short term measures, D’Souza said the GSIDC, which has been given the hospital maintenance, will be asked to take up the repairs of the ACs and the lifts and also cut down the trees, repair walls and clear bushes all round the hospital. “The surrounding of the hospital needs to be clean. We cannot allow trees to hang over the hospital building when the matter was brought to the notice of the district authorities”, he said, even he has asked the Hospicio Medical Superintendent to reduce the number of referrals to the Goa Medical College and Hospital.