By: Shafiq Ahmed Parray
Long time ago, people used to call Hospitals as the “Healing Centres” but nowadays the narrative has changed because of many reasons that we all know. Loss of faith in government hospitals, mushroom growth like private hospitals and all allied corporate private clinics etc. Since I had nothing to do with it and I restricted myself to RPTC test only for which I was there as early as 9:30 am as was also told. Before the concerned staff members of the testing laboratory could come in, I suddenly lost myself in seeing the misery, despair, and helplessness of the people. A kind of an alamort was clearly visible. Nobody knew the direction as to how and where to go. But one thing was sure that those who were already there as indoor patients or those who were entering into the hospital premises were all in the hope of getting cured.
As I kept on watching people were in a sort of hurry just in order to receive prescription tickets from the counters. Some of them were hustling to get themselves enrolled for various tests. Some of them were busy in finding out the proper wards, rooms for various consultations.it looked as if nobody knew as to what to do and whom to ask and all of them kept on asking each other like ward no’s, room no’s, lab rooms, Blood banks, COVID testing rooms etc and in the process a kind of Chaos among everyone could have been seen. By the time I could have seen any staff member coming which wasn’t to be the case. It was already 11am and I could hear someone clamoring & Screaming for losing his mother early in the morning and in the moment of grief I could see my tears rolling down from my eyes too. Now I was getting impatient myself as there was no one to help all of us to get our tests done. It was 11:30am now and we saw a ma’am and a gentleman coming towards us with proper PP Kitts. Before we could make them understand our position and reason for impatience as we were waiting for them from 10 o’clock. They started narrating their own story and problems that they faced during this COVID surge. And thankfully I got my test done and reports are yet to be received.
Such was the day in the hospital. Now deficiencies in the system, room for improvement, accepting the reason for loopholes, holding of an accountability, Caring, our responsibility as citizens, their responsibility as system. All these things are left for you to ponder upon and do something for God’s sake.
Author is Assistant Handicrafts Training Officer( Views expressed are authors’ own)
