Hyderabad’s public health crisis, compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak, is likely to worsen during the oncoming monsoon months. The heavy downpour that hit Hyderabad since two days has resulted in the flooding of state-run Osmania General Hospital (OGH).
Heavy rain, beginning in the early hours of Sunday, inundated the first floor of the building, with the water reaching ankle-height. Rain waters inundated ground floor wards at the OGH on Tuesday and forced employees to start relocating Covid-19 patients. Thick blankets of water entered the entire ground floor of the heritage block in OGH. The OGH has been prone to flooding during the monsoon. Despite this the state government had miserably failed to take precautionary measures to avert the situation, leaving anxious patients and their attendants worried about health as well as their lives.
Continuous heavy showers that lashed the state over the past 24 hours aggravated the overcrowding situation at the hospital. Corona virus patients were being forced to share isolation wards with the dead at the OGH. Six wards, including an ICU, all of which are on the ground floor, were flooded, forcing patients to take refuge on their beds. There are reports that 15-20 patients were forced to share space with two bodies for over seven hours in one of the wards in the OGH. Hospital management admitted that the building was not the ideal place to deal with an infectious disease, especially not one that spreads as easily as COVID-19. Videos went viral that showed how neglect has exposed the Covid-19 patients to misery within the aging walls of OGH. Patients were shifted to upper floors while some machinery and equipment was left on the ground floor.
The iconic century-old heritage building had been a picture of neglect. OGH, once the biggest government hospital, had been a victim of successive government’s apathy to restore it. Years of neglect is visible for any visitor with creaking walls and patches of plaster falling off from the buildings roofs and walls. The OGH housed in a 25-acre sprawling campus has five buildings, one for nursing and the other for patient care.
“The state government is busy in the demolition of the Secretariat building but has a little concern towards Covid-19 patients in the Osmania General Hospital,” State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar lashed out. The situation in the hospital is likely to worsen. Efforts were being made to drain out the water from the wards but the whole hospital is surrounded with chest-deep water. With the onset of monsoon, it is unlikely that the government’s efforts will pave off.
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