With the mercury hovering close to 45 degrees Celsius, the intense summer heat has severely disrupted normal life in the State capital. Scorching heatwaves during the day and warm winds at night have made life miserable for citizens. Amid this severe heat, patients at Jaiprakash (JP) Hospital, one of the city’s largest Government medical facilities, are forced to battle administrative negligence and a failing system more than their actual illnesses. Humidity, hot winds, and a broken cooling system have severely deteriorated the conditions inside the hospital, turning the wards into literal furnaces. A ground-level inspection by ‘The Hitavada’ team exposed the glaring shortcomings in the hospital’s arrangements. During the peak afternoon heat, approximately 15 patients were found admitted in each ward across the hospital. Shockingly, only a single cooler was found operational for such a large number of patients in each of these wards. The same dismal state of affairs was observed in the female ward, where only one cooler was running for around 15 to 20 patients. The humidity levels are so high that the atmosphere inside the wards resembles a closed room filled with trapped hot air, making it extremely difficult for patients to even breathe. Driven by this unbearable heat, patients and their attendants have been forced to fan themselves using plastic hand fans and folded newspapers. Finding no relief during the afternoon, several patients along with children were seen leaving the children’s ward to sit in the corridors and other cooler spots in search of some respite.

 

Lamenting the pathetic conditions, a female patient, Kavita, said, “I feel completely suffocated in this hot atmosphere. I am forced to leave my bed repeatedly and sit outside in search of some respite, but there is hardly any relief anywhere.” The situation is so grim that an elderly male patient was forced to strip off his clothes as he simply could not bear the stifling heat inside the ward. Patient, Rishabh, expressed his helplessness, saying, “We are quietly enduring this painful atmosphere only for the sake of treatment, because we cannot afford the expensive medical care at private hospitals.” Despite the blistering summer, many wards in JP Hospital lack even proper arrangements for clean drinking water. Furthermore, patients’ attendants are forced to spend entire nights awake, sitting beside beds or out in the corridors. Due to the intense humidity and heavy suffocation, patients are repeatedly forced to step out of the wards into the open air. The ground reality of the hospital administration’s sheer negligence is that some of the coolers are even running dry without any water, causing them to blow gusts of hot air instead of providing cooling relief. When ‘The Hitavada Team’ contacted Hospital Civil Surgeon Dr Sanjay Jain regarding this matter, he downplayed the issue, stating, “Work is currently being managed with a single cooler in the ward, and there is no need for any other cooler at present.”