HYDERABAD: Long queues at the free drinking water distribution stalls, scores of people crowding under one fan and some of them carrying their own portable table fans is a common site at the Osmania General Hospital this summer. With the mercury soaring as never before and heatwave conditions continuing to prevail in the State, the patients and their kin at the government hospitals seem to be having nightmares.
Speaking to Express, superintendent of Osmania General Hospital, Dr B Nagender said, “The old building is constructed in such a way that there is no requirement for extra cooling. However, patients and their attendants in the three wards in the hospital’s old building are carrying their own table fans to get some relief from the scorching heat.”
Meanwhile, in order to provide some relief to the people at the hospital, many NGOs have installed water stations on the premises. A newly constructed waiting shed has provided some respite from the harsh heat.
The situation is a tad better at Niloufer Hospital, as the shelter home for patients’ attendants is equipped with clean bunk beds, a cooler and washrooms. Speaking to Express, the caretaker of the shelter home, said, “Most of the family members of the patients do not use shelter home as the rooms are separate for men and women. The family chooses to stay together and therefore they sleep in the compound outside on the hospital premises,” he said. In other government hospitals including Gandhi and NIMS, the situation is no less different.
Heatstroke claims two more lives in Hyderabad
Kummari Yenkanna (55) and an unidentified man died, reportedly of heatstroke at Hayathnagar and Kukatpally respectively on Monday. According to information, Yenkanna had worked the entire day under the hot sun and it is assumed that, as a result, he could have died of heatstroke. In another incident, a passerby noticed the body of an unidentified man, in his mid-60s, by the roadside near D Mart store at Kukatpally on Tuesday afternoon. Police suspect that the man could have died due to heatstroke.