The Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital. Picture by S.H. Patgiri

June 4: The Mahendra Mohan Choudhury (MMC) Hospital, the oldest government hospital in the city, is in for a facelift. If everything goes according to plan, the hospital will have an exclusive restroom for patients, state-of-the-art blood bank and new wards with more beds by the end of this year.

A recent meeting between health minister Bhumidhar Barman and the MMC Hospital management society chalked out various plans to pool funds from different government agencies as well as private sector organisations with an aim at creating better infrastructure in the hospital.

Efforts of the hospital have already borne fruit as the All Guwahati Medicine Dealers Association and the Assam State AIDS Control Society have donated generators of 20 KW and 10 KW capacity respectively.

“Generators have come to us as a boon. For a long time, the hospital has been suffering from perennial power crisis and erratic loadshedding. A new room is being constructed to install the generators. From now on, the hospital will have uninterrupted power supply,” said Dr Pratap Sarmah, superintendent of MMC hospital.

Sarmah, while expressing his gratitude to both associations, said the hospital management has mooted various proposals to impress upon other organisations to come forward and extend logistic support to the oldest hospital.

A team of experts from the Central Water Commission (CWC) yesterday visited the MMC Hospital and conducted a preliminary survey to install a deep tubewell, digging for which will begin from next week.

Though the MMC Hospital is situated close to the main water treatment plant of the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC), the hospital has been facing severe shortage of drinking water. Water pipes in the wards often run dry in the peak of summer.

Sarmah, quoting the state health minister, said a plan would soon be executed to renovate the existing building of the hospital, which once housed the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH). “The building will be renovated by the PWD as part of its disaster mitigation scheme,” he said.

The hospital has a total of 68 nurses and 44 doctors of whom only 22 are regular. The hospital needs more support staff such as ward boys and guards.

Sarmah said things are moving fast. “The OPD is catering to more patients than ever before. More than 500 patients registered their names at the OPD today.”

The employees are, however, not satisfied. They said the hospital has fallen on bad times. “Once considered the premier health institute of the state, it lacks even basic amenities,” an employee said. “Even our quarters are not fit for living,” he added.