Vijayawada: Sanitation 82% assured, yet infant dies of rat bite

Vijayawada: The wilful negligence in monitoring the sanitation conditions at Govern-ment General Hospital, Guntur that led to infant death after a rat bite in August 2015, reveals the information obtained through Right to Infor-mation Act, by this correspondent.

The agreement between the contractor Chaitanya Jyothi Welfare Society, Vijayawada, and GGH, strictly directed the hospital management to terminate the contract if the contractor violates terms and conditions in providing sanitation and security.

But the monitoring officials concerned gave minimum 82 per cent satisfaction report on the sanitation conditions every month, till the death incident happened at the hospital.

After that, the state government terminated the contract. In fact, if the contractor failed to reach 75 per cent or more consecutively for three months or five times in a year then the contract would be terminated automatically, acco-rding to the section 3.8.1 of the agreement.

The performance security of the agency would be forfeited. Minister for health and medical Kamineni Srin-ivas himself admitted that because of failure in pest controlling and providing sanitation they terminated the contract.

It reveals the fact that the then supervisory staff of the hospital nominated by the former superintendent consisting of RMOs, HODs, civil surgeons and assistant surgeons neglected the monitoring of the sanitation works.

The agreement mandated the supervisory staff to monitor and report the same to the superintendent in prescribed format everyday.

If the contractor violates the agreement then they have the right to terminate the contract. Despite all the well established monitoring mechanism, the GGH management failed in terminating the agreement.

It gave more than 80% even up to 92% satisfaction over the sanitation conditions at the hospital. But the rats killed an infant at the hospital.

The GGH management released Rs 1,88,91,458 to the contractor from July 2014 to July 2015. Interestingly, a report of exactly a month before rat bit death incident showed that the supervisory staff gave 82% satisfaction over the performance.