The number of abandoned patients, especially the elderly, is rising in the Valley hospitals, and given the space constraints, the hospitals cannot accommodate them for too long. In Bir Hospital, for instance, around three people on an average are literally dumped in the emergency ward each day. Bir Hospital, one of the busiest in the Valley, has only 22 beds each in the emergency and observation departments. The staff then find it too difficult to manage beds for these patients when it is time for them to be shifted out of the emergency room. In any case, no hospital wants to care for the deserted patients since there is no one to clear their bills.

It is inhumane to dump the sick and the dying in this manner. But obviously the kin of many ill patients do not have a sense of duty. This applies also to a number of in-patients. But the problem could be minimised if the hospitals made their work system more organised. If a systematic procedure for registration before admission in the hospitals could be put in place, including full details of patients and their kin, things could improve. But this is difficult in case of patients brought in critical condition to the hospitals. Besides, the system of advance payment, practised mostly in private nursing homes, is difficult to implement as most patients visiting government-run hospitals are from poor backgrounds. Nevertheless, the hospitals must evolve a simple admission system so that they can catch the persons who flee the scene after bringing the patients to the hospital.