Fate of hospital project hangs in the balance

It has been more than two years since the local health department abandoned the dilapidated district civil hospital building in Old City in April 2019, but the wait for the proposed 500-bed hospital could be longer.

“It will take at least three years to complete the building after the construction starts. At present, the designs for the proposed building are being prepared by the architecture department. The designs would then be sent to our client, the Health Department, for final approval before the rough budget estimates are prepared and cleared by the government,” said Sandeep Singh, executive engineer, Gurugram, Public Works Department (Buildings & Roads).

The official, however, added that time required to take all requisite permissions for the project before the start of construction was anyone’s guess.

Land dispute

Manoj Bhardwaj, junior engineer, Civil Hospital, blamed the delay on the dispute over the four-acre land of a government school adjoining the hospital building.

“Initially, the Health Department had proposed to encompass the adjoining school land for the hospital project. The Public Works Department prepared a design for the new hospital premises spread across nine acres, including 5.73-acre land of the existing old hospital, but the Education Department refused to part with the entire land parcel,” said Mr. Bhardwaj.

The matter was finally resolved and the government recently gave in-principle approval to use the two-acre school land for the project and the PWD was directed to prepare the designs.

In another twist to the tale, the Civil Surgeon again wrote to Director General, Health Services on July 2 this year to try and encompass the entire four-acre land belonging to the government school for the hospital project. If this is cleared, the PWD will have to work on the project ab initio, further delaying it.

But the dispute with the Education Department over the land is not the only hurdle in the way of the ambitious project. The Health Department may also need to seek relaxations from the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) guidelines which say that a minimum of 16-acre of land is required for a 500-bedded hospital.

“It is almost impossible to get 16-acre land at the present location. So we have decided to go vertical. With regard to relaxations from IPHS guidelines, it is the responsibility of the Health Department,” said Mr. Singh.

Even as the fate of the project hangs in balance, the residents suffer because of lack of adequate health facilities, especially during the ongoing pandemic. Maneesh Rathee, Deputy Civil Surgeon at Civil Hospital, Sector-10, said the 200-bedded hospital running from the old building was shifted to the present building, which earlier housed a mother and child care unit, as a stop-gap arrangement. “Our doctors attend to 1,700-1,800 OPD patients daily across a dozen departments, besides the routine surgeries, Ayush OPD, and round-the-clock maternity services,” said Dr. Rathee.

Hospital burdened

The hospital infrastructure, which was not enough for the pre-COVID daily load of patients, has been further burdened due to the pandemic outbreak. “We now run a round-the-clock flu OPD, COVID laboratory and also carry out COVID sampling as an added job. Though the number of paramedical staff, lab technicians and nurses has gone up, the number of doctors remains the same,” said Dr. Rathee.

Though the hospital has been shifted to a new building, CT scan and MRI facility through public-private mode continues to run from the old building forcing patients to run between the two buildings located at a distance of around 30 minutes.

Waiting in the OPD service queue at Sector-10 hospital, Ramesh Kaushik, a resident of Patel Nagar, grumbled that Gurugram was a medical hub with world-class health facilities and fancy hospitals, but a large section of its population, including migrants, could not afford the expensive treatment and suffered due to lack of adequate and good quality health facilities in government set-ups. “Not just that the Sector-10 hospital is not centrally located unlike the old civil hospital, the physical infrastructure and manpower, too, are far from adequate at this hospital to cater to the growing population,” he said.