Bhubaneswar, April 11: For Sribatsa Rana of Khurda, the gynaecology ward of Capital Hospital here is a "hell".
Rana, a 35-year-old shopkeeper from Khurda, recently acquired the notion after admitting his wife Nita, 28, to the ward earlier this month for delivery. His wife gave birth to a baby girl on April 10.
"The gynaecology ward at Capital Hospital resembles a hell. On April 9, I admitted my wife at the ward for delivery - but could not get a bed. Since the child was born, my wife and my newborn girl have been forced to sleep on the floor," he said. Rana's wife was discharged from the medical facility on Tuesday.
Rana could have had a different experience altogether had the much-hyped Mother and Childcare Unit at Capital Hospital started its operation. However, the works department is yet to handover the building to the hospital administration - that is even two months after chief minister Naveen Patnaik had inaugurated the facility.
The works department had started construction of the structure late in 2014 and recently finished nearly 90 per cent work that was followed by the inauguration of the building by chief minister Naveen Patnaik on February 16.
The state government had spent nearly Rs 17 crore on the building.
"The works department is looking after the construction of the new Mother and Childcare Unit. They have been asked to hand us over the furnished building. Only then we can start shifting both our paediatric and gynaecology wards to the new facility," said Capital Hospital director Biswa Bhusan Pattnaik.
When asked about the delay, a senior works department official told The Telegraph that work on the building's exterior parts had been over long ago, but that on the interior portion such as electrical fitting and wall painting are yet to be carried out.
"The work will be over within a month or two. We will hand over the furnished building to the hospital administration after which they can start shifting the desired facilities inside the unit. Our people are working day and night to complete the construction," said the official.
The authorities are not ready to acknowledge that the work is going slow. However, the untold reasons have already worsened the predicament of patients admitted at the obstetric and gynaecology wards of Capital Hospital.
At present, the gynaecology ward has 50 beds for the in-patients - a situation that forces many to lie on the floor with mats of their own. Many have to lie even near bathrooms and toilets in unhygienic conditions.
A similar situation prevails at the paediatric ward. This, too, has 50 beds for the in-patients, excluding one 10-bed sick newborn care unit. The situation of the ward has worsened after the in-patient department of Shishu Bhavan in Bhubaneswar had been shifted to the paediatric ward of Capital Hospital in 2012.
Subsequently, in view of a heavy rush in the paediatric, obstetrics and gynaecology wards of the hospital, the state government had decided to build a six-storey building on the hospital premises with state-of-the-art facilities. Once commissioned, the unit will have a capacity to accommodate 100 inpatients.
The new building is supposed to have facilities such as general outpatients clinic, epilepsy clinic, paediatric orthopaedic and ophthalmology services and more. It will have in-patients services such as private rooms, labour room services with foetal monitor and intensive care units. It will also have sick newborn care units.
The hospital receives nearly 100 patients each in its gynaecology and paediatric wards every day. According to information obtained from the management, the hospital had witnessed 802 infant deaths in the past five years against 47,218 live births.
