EE Block’s Matri Sadan hospital is eyeing a February re-opening, a year after it was “inaugurated after a renovation” in January 2015. 

The indoor unit of the corporation-run hospital has been shut for two years now. Last January, the hospital was officially reopened with the number of beds increased from 10 to 60 and the ground floor converted to an outdoor clinic, waiting room and canteen. The renovation had cost the Bidhannagar Municipality around Rs 1.25 crore but it never took off. 

This time round, the authorities say the first floor will have a modern gynaecological ward and second floor a paediatric unit. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU), a four-bed dialysis unit and a general medicine ward will be on the fourth floor.

Sources at the hospital as well as Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) blame the year-long delay on the absence of a resident medical officer and the lack of initiative of its political bosses. “There was neither adequate medical equipment nor regular doctors,” said a hospital source.

Matri Sadan is quite popular with residents of added areas of Salt Lake like Duttabad, Sukantanagar and Kulipara. Two more hospitals run by the corporation in Deshbandhu Nagar and Narayanpur (both used to be under the erstwhile Rajarhat-Gopalpur Municipality) lack rudimentary facilities and have not been admitting patients for years now. 

“I want to make all three hospitals functional as soon as possible. I am aware of the problems plaguing them and I have worked out a strategy to revamp and reopen them by February,” said Pranay Kumar Ray, the mayor-in-council member in charge of health at BMC.

Bidhannagar Sub-Divisional Hospital in DD Block is the only corporation-run hospital in working condition now but even this lacks specialised doctors and equipment and often has to refer patients to other hospitals.