Government General Hospital awaits remedial steps

GUNTUR: It has been one month since the first incident of rat bite was reported at the Government General Hospital, Guntur. However, no concrete steps have been taken regarding the entire episode as of now.

It may be recalled that on August 23, rats bit a ten-day-old infant boy, who was under treatme-nt at the paediatric unit. According to sources, th-is incident was success-fully buried by the GGH superintendent T. Venugopala Rao.

However, rats struck again on August 26. This time round the rats bit and killed the same in-fant. The GGH superintendent tried once again to bury the incident by claiming that the infant died due to congenital ailments which could not be treated anywhere.

However, rights acti-vists, along with media, brought the incident in to the public’s knowledge and brought pressure on the government to resolve it.

On the day the infant died of rat bite, the government initiated several measures and constituted three separate committees – departmental, magisterial and police inquiry committees. Mi-nisters Kamineni Srin-ivasa Rao, P. Narayana and P. Pulla Rao visited the hospital and ann-ounced transfer of the superintendent and departmental action against the medical and nursing staff, termination of sanitary contractor and rem-oval of sanitation workers.

However, no action was initiated against any medical staff including the superintendent.

 On September 19, rats struck terror again. This time, a patient R. Esam-ma of Guntur district was bitten by the rats. This time round, the GGH superintendent rep-ortedly threatened the patient not to reveal the fact.

The patient reportedly admitted the same with minister P. Pullarao. It is observed, that there might be more rat bite cases than these incidents in the hospital which have not come to light.

Explanation sought from some nurses
The 11 staff nurses at Government General Hospital (GGH), Guntur, who did not report on time for their duties on Sunday, have been providing silly reasons to escape from the clutches of departmental action.

Minister P. Pulla Rao caught the staff red-han-ded on Sunday night during his sudden visit to the hospital and directed the superintendent T. Venu-gopala Rao to initiate de-partmental action against them.

Mr Venugopala Rao had served memos to the 11 staff nurses seeking exp-lanation for their irresponsible behaviour reg-arding attending the du-ties which caused inconvenience to the patients. They have been given 24 hours time. Mr Venugopala Rao admitted that despite drawing over Rs 40,000 per month, they  neglected their duties.