WARANGAL: Warangal, which has been proposed to become the next medical hub of Telangana, has dysfunctional equipment at the diagnostic lab of its most important hospital — the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Hospital.MGM is the largest government hospital that caters to six districts in Northern Telangana. However, because the equipment in its lab is faulty, technicians from private labs come to the hospital and collect samples from patients, while charging them high prices for the same.
According to sources, doctors at the hospital themselves advise patients, especially those who need to get tested urgently, to go to private labs to get the tests done. Equipment for thyroid tests, LFT (liver function test), serum electrolytes test, CT scanning and X-ray machine are all not in working condition. In the emergency ward, the only tests which can be conducted are urine test, HIV test and HP (haptoglobin) test. However, as the Pathology, Microbiology and Biochemistry department labs are under the administration of Kakatiya Medical College (KMC), those labs are well maintained and the equipment there is functional, said MGM Hospital officials.
Speaking to Express, MGM Hospital Superintendent Dr V Chandrashekar said after recently taking charge of the post, he had conducted a meeting all the heads of department of labs and collected details of working and non-working equipment from them. He said a report had been prepared and submitted to the Director of Medical Education (DME) in this regard.
Chandrashekar added that diagnosis labs were under the ambit of Kakatiya Medical College authorities, but an action plan was being prepared to get all diagnosis labs under the department of laboratory medicine. He claimed that the issue of faulty equipment at the diagnostic labs would be resolved very soon.