As I was walking through the SMHS hospital passageway during these enduring curfewed nights, where I had been accompanying my father who is ailing from acute pancreatitis I came across the foundation stone of the SHMS hospital which was laid by the honorable Viceroy to India in 1940 and till day it stands witness to the remarkable services the hospital has provided to the masses. Then for a moment I thought that never on earth would have that Viceroy to India who had laid down the foundation stone, imagined even in his wildest dreams that such critical state of affairs would be faced by the inmates of the hospital. We all are aware of the crisis that has hit the valley; the death toll is swelling day by day and the injured being poured into the hospital. But the inside of the hospital is not known to many of us. I myself wouldn’t have known it had my Dad not been admitted there. Every day in the morning as I look for the newspaper vendor and then have a look at the news and the photos that it carries, inside the jam packed ward of the hospital, I find that somewhere the news is unfinished and incomplete. I am not pointing that the newspaper people are not doing their due job but I mean something that is happening inside the hospital, the problems that are associated with these extreme conditions that are neither aired nor covered by media.

       During one week stay at the hospital, I witnessed hundreds and thousands of people waiting here outside the gates of the hospital looking for solutions to their respective varying problems that have all been aggravated by a common single cause i.e. the imposition of the curfew and the strike. While majority of them are there waiting to view the atrocities done due to the CRPF and the police firings and have a count of the massacred and the injured at various places during the day and then share the common pain of the loss by holding peaceful protests, other are all queued up waiting with every class of urns and containers for the relief and the food. Looking at their weak physical conditions, one can imagine how badly one needs a loaf of bread or a cup of a tea. Thanks to the relief contributed by the Nawa-kadal residents, whose turn it was on that day for the relief work, that I along with so many other people managed to have our dinner. Otherwise had to sleep unfed. Still there are some other mammoth gatherings longing near the gates of the hospital for the only means of transport i.e. the ambulances, which too are very few in numbers, to carry their patients, some already expired and wrapped in a blanket while some waiting to go home after recovery. The fact being that they have already been discharged from the hospital since days but are stranded there. They spend nights in the corridors inside the wards. This is the scene outside the hospital. Inside, there is sheer chaos and no arrangements. On one side there is a group of women weeping outside the trauma centre and the operation theatre where a child just below 10, critically injured by the bullets of the CRPF, is operated upon. After hours of operation and after consuming several pints of blood, the innocent succumbed. This tragedy is followed by some angry protests as a natural reaction. Police and the paramilitary deal with these protests by force and tear gas shells even reach the corridors of the hospital.

Shortage of beds, drugs, surgical instruments, paucity of space  - there is a huge lot of problems faced by this hospital. Government has a duty to attend to it. After all here we come to have ourselves treated. When we leave in a state of shock, we only worsen our ailment.

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Lastupdate on : Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 IST