The Chhapra Sadar Hospital. Telegraph picture

Chhapra, July 20: The district Sadar hospital is crying for an infrastructure upgrade. The hospital authorities, however, have decided to upgrade the health hub to an international standard.

Chhapra Sadar Hospital deputy superintendent Shambhunath Singh said: “We have decided to upgrade the hospital and applied for funds to various agencies like National Health System Resource Centre, New Delhi, and State Health Society, Bihar.” Rail India Technical and Economic Services (Rites) has also begun an audit of the hospital.

Civil surgeon A.N. Jha, in a report to NHSRC, has described the status of the hospital infrastructure at length and also prepared an action plan to overcome the shortcomings.

According to the civil surgeon’s report, no BPL verification is conducted at the outpatients’ department (OPD) of the hospital. Doctors are often not available at the OPD. There is also no system to issue tokens to patients to call them. As a result, the treatment of patients during OPD hours is delayed.

Also, the unavailability of healthcare equipment hinders the treatment process. Equipment necessary for emergency resuscitation is not available.

The civil surgeon said the intensive care unit is not functional and as a result, critical patients cannot be treated here. The operation theatre (OT) is inadequately stocked and there is no system for temperature control either in the OT or the labour room. Women who give birth in the hospital are discharged within two hours, as opposed to the 48-hour compulsory observation period.

The system to dispense medicine is also inadequate, as there is no well-defined inventory management system in the hospital pharmacy and stores. A number of medicines prescribed by the doctors are not available in the pharmacy of the hospital.

These shortcomings could soon be a thing of the past, though. The civil surgeon, in his action plan, has suggested remedies for them.

He has suggested that a notice for BPL verification should be displayed at the registration counter. The old ward should be shifted to a new building and a nursing station with adequate infrastructure would be set up.

According to his plan, visitors would be issued identity cards and the visiting hours would be displayed at the entrance of the hospital.