Defunct fans add to the patients’ misery in the emergency ward of PMCH. Pictures by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Day: Monday
Time: 1pm
Place: Emergency ward, Patna Medical College & Hospital

A five-year-old girl lay on top of a tattered mattress. Looked disturbed. Her bruised face — a result of an accident — however, was not the reason behind her anxiousness.

“Dard se zyada garmi se pareshan hain. Bahut halat kharab hai (More than the pain, it is the heat that is disturbing her),” an attendant of the child said as she swayed the hand-held portable bamboo fan.

It was just five minutes in the emergency ward and 21-year-old Abdul, a resident of Phulwari was already drenched in sweat, as he gasped for some cool, fresh air.

Abdul had come to meet his uncle, who fractured his leg and is admitted in the hospital for the past five days. The 21-year-old could not tolerate the stench of soiled bandages and midicines that had filled the ward because of the heat that had reached a boiling point.

“Poor people like us have no choice. We cannot afford expensive private clinics. An emergency ward means patients who have been brought here are critical. Why can’t there be fans and proper ventilation? This ward is one big boiling plant,” Abdul said.

At one glance, one can find hundreds of people moving along the huge dark gallery of the ward. Most of the time, patients are asked to rest on the ground because of unavailability of beds amid the filth and saline bottles hanging from strings tied from one end to another.

However, it is not that the ward does not have ceiling fans. Those that are hanging are so laggard in speed that one could hardly feel the breeze. “What to do there is no voltage. There are fans that don’t work at all. At least a few are working. What we can do? We, too, are suffering,” a nurse, racing with a few medicines, said. In some of the rooms occupied by the nurses, the situation is, however, a bit airy. The fans are powerful and steady.

“Yahan connection hi aisa hai. (Power connection is poor here). The rooms occupied by the doctors or nurses will obviously have powerful fans. After all they are the employees of PMCH. Are you new in Patna?” a ward boy asked.

The dirty linen on the beds, most of which are wet because of sweat and urine, makes matters deplorable for the patients. For a few, adapting to the ward environment at least helps them beat the heat. “It is called acclimatisation. If they move a lot they will feel the heat more. There is no option for us. So we just stay still,” an attendant of a patient said.

Right at the farthest corner of the emergency ward a woman was seen crying. She suffered burn injuries after an LPG cylinder exploded. Her three attendants moved their hands as fast as they could to give provide her some air with the portable fans. To make matters worse, countless houseflies tried to get through her open wounds. Her attendants covered her with a thin piece of cloth.

What is more ironical is that there are machines that appear like air-conditioners but they never work. “They stopped working long time back. There is nothing to know or tell. You are asking a lot of questions,” a junior doctor of PMCH said.

However, there were doctors who were interested in speaking. “Working in medical emergency during summers is like working in a furnace because there are no air-conditioners, coolers or exhaust in the room. Half of the fans don’t work. Recently, some attendants broke the windowpanes so that at least some fresh air could enter the room. We have been asking the authorities for some facilities but nothing has happened,” another junior doctor said.