As one of the first generation medicos from Kashmir medical college I have seen both Lal Ded and Panth hospital growing from their infancy to where they are today. Panth hospital is a roadside hospital where parking for the cars has never been thought off besides there is absolutely no area of shelter for the attendants or helpers of the patients with the result they make crowds in the wards resulting cross infections in addition to causing difficulties for a good patient care. Its entrance needs to be relocated and the area around accommodating some private dilapidated buildings needs to be annexed with the hospital. Its land use needs to be properly worked out in consultation with experts.  
Unfortunately we believe in patch work and every one of us particularly the politicians are under a wrong notion that we know everything. This is an age of proficiency and there are experts for every field and we should not hesitate to seek an advice when or where ever needed. As we know present Lal Ded hospital was children and women’s hospital where we had a capacity of two hundred and fifty beds for neonates and children and the present children’s hospital at Batwara called as G.B. Panth hospital that was cantonment maternity unit has one hundred and fifty beds to cater the whole valley from one end to the other end.
In order to curtail the infant mortality we need to look on the problem in totality. To begin with we need to improve on child care in our district hospitals and our maternity hospitals in the peripheries so that unnecessary work loads on our tertiary care hospitals are reduced. And then our referral system has to be organized properly. New born transported from far flung areas like Kupwara in north or Gawran in south Kashmir with our tragic road connectivity and our shabby ambulance system are always at the mercy of god. I am sure my readers will agree that we don’t have to make our doctors a scapegoat for the delay in transportation of our critically ill neonates. For our Lal Ded hospital we need to have a fully equipped neonatal care unit within the premises supervised by senior and expert pediatricians with Nikko trained nurses. We have scores of nurses jobless. We have jobless doctors and dentists qualified from our neighboring countries.  In order to run any institution effectively we need man power and in order to deal with human life we need well trained and of course dedicated experts too. All of us know that we have shortage of doctors and it is an uphill task to run huge hospitals like GB Panth with limited number of doctors and paramedical staff. Central government has decided to increase the number of seats for post graduate and undergraduate medical colleges besides increasing the number of medical colleges in the country. Our state government needs to grab the opportunity on first priority to get its share.
Critically ill newborns and preterm neonates invariably need sophisticated gadgets like ventilators for their survival. We should equip our tertiary care hospitals and our district level hospitals in the peripheries with sufficient number of such life saving gadgets plus the drugs needed. Besides that every tertiary care hospital should have a bioengineering wing to monitor if these machines are in order.
Needless to say J&K has the best trained doctors and some of their contemporaries are working in the top most hospitals of the world who have earned laurels for our nation. Some of them will definitely love to come back with the expertise and knowledge they have gained abroad to serve their home land if encouraged. Yes we may have to improve our managerial skills and in order to do so we need to have fully trained hospital administrators. Kashmir medical college and its sister concerns like Jammu medical college and SKIMS are producing excellent doctors we may have to look in to possibilities of introducing masters courses in hospital administration in Kashmir university or elsewhere  to cater the demand for our increasing number of hospitals in the state.  
Last but not the least our community as a nation needs to explore as how much we are responsible in making a mess of our hospitals. In fact we all need counseling regarding our approach to a proper health care. Every day Scores of visitors visit our hospitals without being conscious of carrying loads of resistant infections that are the major cause of fatalities in our hospitals. We also need to remember doctors are a part of the community learning to play gods but are no gods.
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Lastupdate on : Sun, 20 May 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 20 May 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 IST