Hygiene conditions in government notified Covid-19 hospitals are not good and patients are complaining of bad hygiene and sanitation facilities. With the number of suspected patients in Hyderabad rising to 500, the isolation facilities are filled up.
There are complaints of 15 people using four bathrooms which are not cleaned properly. In fact some of them are asking family members to provide them with cleaners so that they can regularly clean the bathrooms themselves.
Patients who have mild symptoms but are positive have nothing to do except sleep and they are not told why they have been hospitalised. “I am doing nothing but sleeping here. I get no medicines and the food is also not good. Why don’t they let me go home? I am feeling like an orphan here,” said one patient who has asked doctors this question too, but as they do not come close to him they have told him to rest and not ask too many questions.
Patients say that they are feeling helpless and are having difficulty coping with the environment around them.
Doctors wear personal protection equipment and seeing them in this garb makes patients feel as though they have got a very bad disease. One patient said, “The doctors are acting differently as they do not speak to us and stand very far from us. They only ask if we have any breathing problems. If we say no we are asked to lie down and rest. Why are we being made to sleep here?”
There are complaints of mosquitoes in the wards and patients don’t get a good night’s sleep. Those who require medication and need extra support are kept in special rooms. There a nurse visits morning and evening and doctors are also present.
The Covid-19 notified centres in Hyderabad are -only government hospitals - Gandhi, Fever, Chest, King Koti and four Ayush hospitals. Patients found positive and seriously affected are admitted here.
A senior health official explained, “Due to these complaints from Covid-19 patients, some of them who are positive are not traceable as they have switched off their phones. We are not able to track them.”
Covid-19 patients who can afford to pay do not want to go to government hospitals and are demanding that private hospitals should be allowed to admit them. The suspected patients are lining up at private hospitals and demanding that they be treated there.
Most of these patients are visiting government hospitals for the first time. A patients are saying, “It is horrible and they can’t believe that the government hospitals are so badly maintained. They want to go to private hospitals for treatment.”
