Improve Healthcare Facilities in Punjab, Haryana for Better Services in City: UT to HC

The UT Administration on Monday asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court to issue directions to Punjab and Haryana to improve healthcare facilities around Chandigarh for tremendously reducing the burden on the services in the city. In an affidavit submitted before Justice Rajan Gupta, Secretary, Health, Anurag Agarwal, said a meeting was convened to discuss issues arising in the present petition. Director, Health and Family Welfare, Dr G Dewan, was among those others present. Agarwal said the project of setting up a trauma center in Sector 53 would take time. As such, it was decided that trauma and emergency services in the GMCH need to be upgraded urgently.

It was decided that the GMCH will create trauma and emergency services within the hospital and accordingly, 193-bed trauma and emergency block were proposed. For improving the efficiency of the trauma and emergency services at the GMCH, the Administrator has already allowed the creation of the department of emergency medicine. It has also been allowed to engage four assistant professors and nine senior residents for trauma and emergency services. The estimated amount of ₹41 crore has already been approved. Once ready, the new services will be sufficient to handle the workload of trauma and emergency patients for the next couple of years. The Bench was also told that a sports injury centre was also coming up on about 1.4 acres at the GMCH-32.

The reply came less than a year after the High Court took cognizance of the ailing health facilities in the region. Justice Gupta has already admonished the authorities concerned in Chandigarh for the absence of appropriate and fully equipped trauma centers in the city. “It is inexplicable why proper and fully equipped trauma centers have not been set up in Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, and Government Multi Specialty Hospital, Sector 16, leaving PGI to bear the brunt,” Justice Gupta asserted on a previous date of hearing. The directions came on a bunch of petitions filed by Hassan Mohd and other petitioners against Haryana and other respondents. The Bench was told that the case revolved around the death of a woman patient in a hospital.

It was alleged that petitioner Hassan Mohd’s wife had died due to negligence of the authorities while she was admitted to Government Medical College at Mewat. His counsel had added that repeated requests were made to the authorities concerned in the hospital to change the position of her bed in the ward. Despite the requests, action was not taken. The patient, subsequently, jumped from the window and died. At that time, Justice Gupta had asserted: “A larger question also arises about the state of various medical hospitals/colleges existing in the Haryana and conditions prevailing therein.” – Tribune India