Will century-old Osmania General Hospital building in Hyderabad survive this monsoon?
HYDERABAD: Delayed but not depleted, the monsoon is setting in with full force. With heavy rains expected to lash the city for more than a month, the patients and doctors at the century-old building that houses Osmania General Hospital are once again bracing themselves for water seepage and falling chunks of the ceiling.
While the government has finally decided to allocate funds for the renovation works, doctors are not sure if the building can survive another monsoon. They are of the opinion that the only way to see out the season is by shifting the patients out of the otherwise overcrowded old structure and accommodating them in a new and safer building.
Dr PS Vijyender, a junior doctor at Osmania General Hospital, laments, “The second floor was already shut down a few years back as the chunks of the ceiling started falling off due to lack of maintenance. The situation became worse during monsoon as the water logging on the roof and seepage through the ceiling lead to peeling of the plaster from the ceiling. The patients have been accommodated on the first and ground floors that has lead to overcrowding to a point where many them have to sleep in the corridors.” “Now the first-floor ceiling too developed huge cracks. In this situation, accommodating the patients will be a herculean task. I wonder if the hospital will survive this monsoon before the much-awaited restoration works are started,” he said.
Expressing similar fears, Anuradha Reddy, convenor of INTACH, Hyderabad, said, “Every building -- new or old -- requires pre-monsoon precautions and maintenance. The major issue with Osmania General Hospital is the roof. The debris and garbage have been collecting on the roof for years, which needs to be cleared immediately. Water seepage is not the biggest fear as the building is made of granite, but it will lead to the plaster falling off. While the hospital requires a routine maintenance system, to survive the monsoon what we need is an emergency maintenance drive.”
However, Dr. Pandu Naik, the head of the Joint Action Committee that demanded a new building, seemed hopeful and said, “A lump sum budget allocation has been started to restore and conserve the building, along with the construction of four new towers. We definitely appreciate the move by the government, and we are hopeful that this will help us to cater better to the patients.”