The Telangana govt has sanctioned Rs.100 crore to build the Replica of the existing old age building of Osmania General Hospital in 18 months, announced health minister C Laxma Reddy on Monday.
“The OGH will be developed into a super specialty hospital. The bed capacity will be increased from 1100 to 2000”, said Reddy.
Mainly people are concerned about the heritage part, to solve that, we have decided to build a replica of it in exactly one and half year,” Reddy said.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event at Niloufer Hospital, the Health Minister made it clear that they are hardly facing any opposition in this matter. “When we take these kind of decisions, it’s obvious that there will be some small hurdles, apart from that we are not facing any major opposition from anyone and there should be no problem in getting permission from the Centre.
Laxma Reddy, said that, the engineering experts made it clear that the hospital cannot run in that building and advised us to shift it as soon as possible. There are chances that it may collapse at any time, resulting in a major tragedy. So, there is no way that the hospital will continue running there.
Meanwhile, the Telangana government is making arrangements to shift the patients in the old building to other hospitals. “The old building has 879 beds and all of the patients need to be shifted to some other hospital. We haven’t zeroed in on any hospital yet and are considering all options available. Fever Hospital and King Koti Hospital are being considered as they are nearer to the Osmania GH,” he said.
Laxma Reddy said that the plight of government area hospitals is the main reason for over crowding of major hospitals like Osmania.
“We have surveyed almost all the area hospitals and felt that although the doctors are experts, lack of facilities are forcing them to refer cases to other major hospitals like OGH. To overcome the problem, we decided to start an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with all the facilities, in all the area hospitals, so that patients get treated there itself,” Reddy said.
Replying to a question on staff shortage, Reddy, said, “It is true that there is staff shortage. But, this is not a major problem. As announced by the Chief Minister we are going to recruit more people.”
Later, Laxma Reddy launched an ‘Intensified Diarrhea Control Fortnight’ (IDCF) program with an ultimate aim of zero child deaths due to diarrhea.
The diarrhea control programme, to be continued till August 8, will target children below five years of age, especially in the rural areas.