Rishard Khan

The South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) has as­sured pa­tient care was not af­fect­ed or com­pro­mised af­ter what ap­peared to be flood­ing in­side the hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day dur­ing heavy rain­fall.

This af­ter at least one video be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, show­ing a work­er lift­ing a nurse on his back while push­ing a pa­tient in a wheel­chair through a flood­ed sec­tion of the hos­pi­tal.

“While there was a sit­u­a­tion of min­i­mal over­flow of wa­ter, due to the in­clement weath­er, it was con­fined to an iso­lat­ed area on the ground floor of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal,” the SWRHA told Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day.

It said pa­tient care was not com­pro­mised and it is now ex­plor­ing so­lu­tions to the prob­lem.

“The SWRHA al­so as­sures that we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with part­ner agen­cies to per­ma­nent­ly mit­i­gate the re­oc­cur­rence of such sit­u­a­tions when it rains heav­i­ly,” it said.

How­ev­er, Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe be­lieves the in­ci­dent was an in­dict­ment on the Gov­ern­ment and its fail­ure to pro­vide sat­is­fac­to­ry health­care to cit­i­zens.

“In ad­di­tion to the nu­mer­ous woes that cit­i­zens face on a dai­ly ba­sis at our na­tion’s health in­sti­tu­tions, re­gard­ing drugs and sup­plies, we are now wit­ness­ing the fall­out from failed/ab­sent pre­ven­tive main­te­nance on the age­ing in­fra­struc­ture at some of these fa­cil­i­ties,” he said in a re­lease.

“If the episode de­pict­ed in the video is at­trib­ut­able to the heavy rains then it re­flects poor plan­ning on the part of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to mit­i­gate for such even­tu­al­i­ties. In ei­ther case, it re­flects the in­abil­i­ty of this Gov­ern­ment and this Min­is­ter of Health to main­tain a safe phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment for pa­tient care and for health­care work­ers to do their jobs safe­ly. While the Min­is­ter of Health con­tin­ues to boast that his Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing first-class health­care, the ex­pe­ri­ence of or­di­nary cit­i­zens and pa­tients on the ground tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.”

He said this comes de­spite spend­ing $35 bil­lion on the sec­tor since 2015.