HYDERABAD: A division bench of Telangana High Court has directed the State government to make its stand regarding construction of a new building for Osmania General Hospital in place of the existing building at Afzal Gunj in Hyderabad. The bench directed the government to place all related details before it by March 5.
The bench was passing this order recently in a PIL filed by Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association, represented by its president Dr K Mahesh Kumar, seeking direction to the Telangana government to construct a new multi-storeyed building to house the existing Osmania General Hospital, nursing college and hostel.
Petitioner’s counsel Sama Sandeep Reddy submitted that the OGH was a 150-year-old institution with the existing building itself being 85-years-old and it was in a dilapidated condition posing threat to the lives of human beings who included doctors, nurses and other supporting staff apart from the patients. At present, a major portion of the existing hospital building spread over in a 26-acres was rendered useless due to safety concerns and that the structure may collapse at any moment.
Even the buildings housing the nursing college and hostel were also in a dilapidated condition. There was no scope for any sort of repair or restoration of the present building. Since the year 2010, various governments have made several promises but failed to fulfil them. Even the present chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao has also given an assurance for construction of a new building, he added.