Chief minister Raghubar Das may be cracking the whip to improve the functioning of RIMS, but patients at the state’s only government-run super speciality hospital are being exposed to sound and air pollution that would inconvenience even healthy people.

A visit to RIMS on Friday afternoon exposed that bed-ridden patients at the medicine ward have to put up with construction work on at the ward, complete with ear-splitting sounds of aluminium sheets being cut, and dust from sand and cement. Rooms supposed to be used by nurses and paramedical staff to take care of patients were being used as storage space for tiles, cement bags and other building materials. In place of medical staff carrying medicines and stethoscopes, construction workers were roaming around with the tools of their trade.

“We have come here as the doctors are good; otherwise the situation in the ward is not good enough to stay even for an hour,” said Deepak Gorai, who had come with ailing his mother from Jainamore in Bokaro, around 94km from the capital.

“There is no water in the washroom; the noise in the ward is sufficient to make anyone ill. Dust flying in the ward makes the place more like a construction site than a hospital,” Gorai added.

A junior doctor, who did not want to be identified, agreed.

“The situation is prevailing for last one month,” the doctor said, sotto voce. “Those involved in construction work are least bothered about the safety of patients. There is always threat of bronchitis and siderosis (a lung disease) in the ward. The construction also affects academic work when senior doctors explain diseases and their treatment to the junior doctors.”

Another junior doctor questioned the rationale behind some of the work being carried out at the hospital.

“RIMS has slipped from the hands of doctors to the hands of builders who think a good building will help cure patients. Toilets are stinking without water and the government is busy laying tiles by breaking the old floor which was in good condition,” the junior doctor said.

Dr Ajit Kumar Singh, president of the junior doctors’ association at RIMS, said the problem was not limited to the medicine ward.

“This is unplanned work. The situation is the same in the surgery ward too. We demand repairing of medical equipment, more staff, and medicines for proper treatment of patients but what we are getting is unplanned repair work, air and sound pollution. This is loot. Though a mosaic floor is supposed to be good for movement of trolleys, the RIMS management is happily breaking the mosaic floor and laying tiles,” Singh said.

“The repair work has been done in such an unplanned manner in all units that we do not have any space even to shift the patient and we are compelled to treat patients amid polluted air and rampant noise. I remember when chief minister Raghubar Das had visited RIMS he had not entered a unit of the medicine ward after heard the sound,” Singh added.

RIMS superintendent Dr Vivek Kashyap claimed the problem was temporary.

“All precautions have been taken to ensure that patients and doctors do not suffer much,” Kashyap said when contacted. “From many units patient have been shifted to other units till the completion of repairing work. However, there is some problem. It is temporary. As the RIMS building is 60 years old, we cannot avoid repair and maintenance work.”