HYDERABAD:A day after a patch of the ceiling came crashing down at the Osmania General Hospital, it has now come to light that at least one patient had a miraculous escape.
Md Ibrahim (64), who was lying on a bed in the orthopaedics ward, turned aside to pick up a plastic tub when a part of the concrete ceiling fell on his bed. Had he been asleep, he would have been lying straight under the brittle ceiling patch. Ibrahim has been undergoing treatment at the hospital for a fractured leg. Some pieces of the concrete fell on his wife, Rabiya Begum’s (58) head, who was sleeping beside the bed. Luckily, she was not hurt.
However, Ibrahim, who jumped out of his bed, fears that he might have further aggravated his injury. “I don’t have money to spend on treatment again,” he laments.
The Post-Operative Orthopaedics ward is located in the In-Patient (IP) block, which was proposed to be demolished by the Telangana government for this very reason that the building’s crumbling.
A resident of Tadbund, Ibrahim had met with an accident recently. Doctors had used a rod to fix his fractured bone. Ibrahim has now been shifted to a bed just opposite the old one where the ceiling had fallen.
Not surprisingly, Ibrahim and other patients in the ward are a worried lot. None knows when and which part of the ceiling will come down.
Senior and junior doctors echoed the patients’ fears. “These issues keep occurring, and we continue our work,” said a senior doctor. President of the Telangana Junior Doctors’ Association (JUDA), Dr G Srinivas, said that about 10 days ago, a piece of ceiling had fallen down at Operation Theatre-I.
“Whenever it rains, water seeps from the ceiling of the In-Patient Female Surgical ward, which could result in similar issues. We request the State government to construct new buildings as early as possible. The IP Block is not suitable for patients. We don’t mind if the building is constructed around the IP block,” Dr Srinivas said.