Hyderabad: Air-conditioned cubicles will be constructed in the open area near the Osmania General Hospital (OGH) mortuary to operate the outpatient department and the building area will be utilised to accommodate the medical, surgical and orthopaedic wards.
“No patient will be shifted out of the OGH and all the wards are going to be accommodated within the campus,” said health minister Dr C. Laxma Reddy after having a meeting with superintendent Dr Raghu Ram on Saturday morning.
The oupatient department operates out of the emergency wing in the Quli Qutub Shah building which is near the main entrance. The 24 patients who have been shifted from the Osmania General Hospital to King Koti, two days ago, will be treated over there and discharged.
A senior doctor of OGH said, “There will be no shifting of patients from OGH to any other government hospital in the city. We are going to re-utilise the out-patient department as wards and accommodate all our patients there. If required, the super-specialty wards will be put to use as they are in the same campus. In this manner, the patient does not have to go anywhere once they are in the OGH campus.”
The decision not to shift came after the hue and cry raised by patients at Sultan Bazaar and also doctors and para-medical staff. A doctor said, “A strong representation was made to the health minister not to destabilise the Sultan Bazaar hospital and utilise the existing space within the OGH campus.”
After that, discussions were carried out with the superintendent and also the association of doctors to work out a system to operate the hospital effectively from within the campus. With the two floors of the Petlaburj hospital being readied, the doctors insisted that it will be kept as a back-up.
The doctors who were against shifting have heaved a sigh of relief as they have to now work within the campus which ensures that their patients will not have to go in search doctors in different institutions. Another senior doctor said, “Most of our patients come from the old city and nearby villages. They know that they have to get down at the bus station and walk to the hospital. If the units were shifted, it would confuse them.”
“The patients would be affected very badly by the shift and it would not help,” he added. Also, the government has not sanctioned a single penny for shifting of patients and the cost factor was also a major constraint, said another senior doctor.
TPCC: Do not raze Osmania General Hospital
Telangana Congress leaders led by state unit working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and senior MP V. Hanumantha Rao visited the OGH on Saturday and slammed CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao for proposing its demolition. They said the CM was willing to pay Rs 2,000 crore to re-route the Metro Rail to protect the Assembly, but wanted to demolish an iconic structure like the OGH.. They said that he was not using an adjacent 10-acre site to build the new buildings for which the Centre said that the CM wanted to demolish iconic structures and give land to contractors.
