Hyderabad: Patients say ward boys sought bribe

Hyderabad: Relatives of three patients at Osmania General Hospital complained to the resident medical officer on Monday that ward boys were asking money to take the patients on stretchers or wheelchairs.

Mr Naseeruddin, who is visually handicapped, took his wife Aisha Begum to the out-patient wing of the OGH for relapse of tuberculosis. The ward boys asked for Rs 20 to provide a wheelchair.

In another case, Mr Satyanarayana, 65, who was injured in an attack at Begumpet, was undergoing treatment at the hospital. He had to go to the emergency ward for an X-ray. The ward boys refused to take him as he had no money to pay them Rs 20 or Rs 50.

Another patient, 30-year-old Saina, who had injured her leg had to be taken to the old wing of the hospital by her father Nayeem as no one was willing to get the stretcher.

The resident medical officer received the complaint and warned the ward boys. A senior doctor said the head nurses had to monitor the situation but they were not doing so.

“They are complaining that there is a shortage of ward boys which is also true. But asking money from the patients makes them angry and then they go away to private hospitals for treatment,” the doctor said.