Cuttack: The issue of a special ward for the destitute and unidentified patients at SCB hospital is back in focus with the Odisha State Human Rights Commission taking up a complaint seeking intervention for it.

While considering the complaint, the rights panel chairman Justice B.K. Mishra has already made a spot visit on July 25 to consider the necessity of a separate ward for such patients.

"Justice B.K. Mishra, after visiting the casualty and indoor wards of the orthopaedics department expressed the need for a special ward for the destitute and unidentified patients. The hospital administration assured that the issue would be placed before the government," hospital manager Soumya Mohanty said.

The rights panel is adjudicating on a complaint that treatment of such patients continues to carried out in an unorganised manner and in several cases, it borders on human rights violation.

Lawyer and human rights activist Pravat Ranjan Dash filed the complaint pointing out that though the state government had been providing sufficient funds for destitute patients, the treatment of such patients at the hospital lacked co-ordination.

The hospital was yet to come up with a special ward for these patients even as the district administration had pointed to its necessity after probing into the death of an Italian tourist at the hospital in December 2012, the complaint said.

While disposing of a PIL on death of the Italian tourist, the high court had on March 31, 2015, asked the state government to come up with a separate care-taking ward for unattended and unidentified patients at the hospital.

In his complaint filed on May 11, Dash cited the plight of a destitute and unidentified patient admitted at the neuro surgery department published in a vernacular daily published the previous day.

According to the complaint petition, he was allegedly first driven out because he excreted in his clothes and emitted foul smell. However, he was later taken back to the indoor ward following reports in the media about the alleged inhuman treatment, but left to suffer in a corner without proper medical attention.