Hyderabad: Abandoned senior citizens who were not provided care in Osmania General Hospital due to lack of family attendants will now be attended to by volunteers of a non-government organisation and provide medical and required bedside assistance.
The Helping Hand Foundation has volunteers taking care of these senior citizens. Even those who come to the hospital alone or are without any family members will be provided assistance so that medical care is not denied to them.
The services are presently available at OGH but will also be extended to MNJ Cancer Hospital and the Government Maternity Hospital at Petlaburj.
Every month, the OGH finds that there are 15 senior citizens who are ill, wounded or suffering from diseases, but abandoned in the compound of the hospital. Most of them are left by their family members late in the evening or in the night in the premises.
There is no way to stop this practice. The hospital then gets in touch with an old age home in the city and sends them there. But medical care is a problem.
To provide them the required care, HHF volunteers are helping by becoming their attendants.
Dr Nagendra, superintendent of Osmania General Hospital, explained, “An attendant or a family member is required during treatment in the hospital. This is for the benefit of the patient; also the doctor can speak to the family member in case of an emergency or further treatment procedures. Often daily wage workers or those from poorer sections of society come alone. This makes it difficult to treat them.”
He said that with the volunteers now available, these patients can be served.
“Senior citizens are also being provided basic care like clipping of nails, feeding them, tying their hair and it is showing the difference in their psychology and better response to treatment. Most of them are often hungry and have wounds which are infested with maggots and require care,” Dr Nagendra said.
These services in OGH have been provided on an experimental basis since the last one month and the results are encouraging. This is making it possible to allow them to opt for care giving services in other government hospitals too.
