Gaighat, September 30

Doctors at District Hospital, Udayapur have been using the operation theatre to sleep due to lack of enough rooms in their official quarters.

The hospital was established some 40 years ago, but no new physical infrastructure have been developed since. Hospital staffers said there were 14 posts of doctors, including a medical superintendent, when the hospital began operation. But currently there are only three doctors working in the hospital.

Medical Superintendent Dr Bishnu Bahadur Basnet sleeps in his office due to lack of rooms, while the two other doctors use the operation theatre to sleep at night. The operation theatre was offered to the doctors as the hospital hardly receives any surgical case.

Meanwhile, Hospital Development Committee Chairman Shiva Regmi said the Ministry of Health had paid no attention despite frequent requests for construction of quarters for the doctors. “We have requested the concerned authority time and again for the construction of the physical infrastructures, but in vain,” he said.

Regmi said the hospital was upgraded to 50-bed health facility within the last three years. “But not even a single room is allocated to staff,” he said. Regmi said more than 50 rooms were needed in the hospital.