Bed strength of Palampur civil hospital raised: Butail

Our Correspondent

Palampur, May 5

Brij Behari Lal Butail, Speaker of the state Assembly, today announced that bed strength in civil hospital Palampur had been raised from 150 to 200 by the state government.

Butail, who was addressing the media persons after the annual budget meeting of Rogi Kalyan Samiti, said with this decision over seven lakh residents of Palampur region comprising Palampur, Jaisinghpur and Baijnath sub divisions would be benefitted. He thanked Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh for granting his approval for the enhancement of bed strength in the hospital.

“In the absence of beds in the hospital many times patients are referred to the Government Medical College Tanda. Such patients will now be saved from inconvenience”, Butail added.

He said in the current financial year Rs 1.5 crores had been earmarked for expansion and development of infrastructure in the hospital. He said it had also been decided to modernize the operation theater of the hospital.

The Speaker said efforts were on to introduce MRI facilities in the civil hospital under public private partnership mode as the state government had approached some companies to join hands with the government. He announced that CT scan service had already been made functional.

Butail also advised the doctors to suggest minimum medication to the patients visiting the civil hospital and prescribe only those drugs which were available in hospital stores. He said the state government was committed to providing free medicines to the poor patients visiting the state hospitals.

He said in view of the rising prices of drugs the government had made available all type of drugs in the hospital stores. “Doctors should avoid prescribing drugs from the market which are not only costly but also beyond the reach of the common patients. Only in the case of emergency doctors should ask the patients to buy medicines from the market that too of standard companies,” Butail added.

Butail also stressed that the SRL lab and CT scan machine had already been made functional in the civil hospital under the PPP mode and state government had also fixed the rates of all type of tests which were 60 per cent cheaper than the private labs.