Odisha HC seeks status of SCB Paediatric Ward-Sishu Bhawan merger plan from Govt

Cuttack: Seeking report on the present status of the decade-old merging plan of SCB Medical College and Hospital's (SCBMCH) paediatric ward with the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Post Graduate Institute of Paediatric Studies (known as Sishu Bhawan), the Orissa High Court directed the State government to file an affidavit in this regard.

The state government had decided plan to shift the existing 60 beds under the pediatric wing of the SCB hospital to the 280-bed Sishu Bhawan in 2012. It was claimed that Sishu Bhawan is the paediatric unit of SCB, so the government had earlier decided to merge both the institute at one point. After the merger, the bed strength at Sishu Bhawan will be 340. Since Sishu Bhawan lacked adequate equipment to handle the critical patients, the court issued a stay order on Jan 18, 2012. 

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The paediatric units of both institutions will simply be combined at Sishu Bhawan, according to a commission assembled by the state government in 2014, and this should not be interpreted as a relocation. The committee had made it clear that a 24-bed sick newborn care unit (SNCU) and a 9-bed paediatric casualty wing at SCB will continue to operate at their separate locations despite the convergence of paediatric services at Sishu Bhawan.

After observing that no further proceedings has taken place in the following years, The division bench of Chief Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Chittaranjan Dash sought the present status report from the state government. 

Considering the PIL filed by lawyer Kanhayalal Sharma, an intervention petition filed by post-graduate students of SCBMCH, and another PIL by SCBMCH Students' Union, the court ordered Sharma to visit both SCBMCH and Sishu Bhawan and file an affidavit reporting the present status of both the institute by December 6. 

Pointing out the lack of facilities at Sishu Bhawan, Sharma said that the institute lacks multi-specialty departments such as cardiology, neurosurgery, endocrinology, and nephrology. Moreover, it is suffering from problems such as shortage of space, inadequate doctors, insufficient number of anesthesiologists, and lack of equipment. In the absence of these facilities. Most critical patients are referred to SCB from Sishu Bhavan as the latter does not have super-specialty facilities. With the current situation being unstable, the treatment of the children will be a questionable issue if the merging plan is approved by the court. 

Meanwhile, the merge will also affect the medical students at large who will have to travel 8 km for their clinical classes, ward duty, semester, and annual examination to Sishu Bhawan. The state government had planned to provide paediatric care only at Sishu Bhawan and not at SCB medical college and hospital due to several factors concerned, TNIE reports.

The next hearing of the case has been fixed on December 6.

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