The medical center is facing multiple problems, like shortages of medicine, equipment, funding and inadequate professionals that reduces the quality of service delivery to the 20,000 students of the University. The teachers, staff and the wards – some thousands in number – also use this centre for health needs.
Most of the time the patients, with even common diseases or minor injuries, have to turn to nearby hospitals as the medical center fails to cater to their needs. The situation appears to have worsened progressively over the past few years. While one reason is the increasingly higher number of students getting admitted to the university annually, another and a more worrying one is that the authority is not doing anything conducive to the development of the center, that leaves the lone medical center of the highest echelon academic institution of the nation in a dreadful situation.
It is alleged that the center which started in 1922 is unable to provide even the first aid treatment due to inadequate manpower and facilities. Over 400 patients, including students, teachers, and staff go to the medical center daily for treatment, but they fail to get the service for lack of medical facilities. Only 24 doctors serve in the medical center where eight of them are part-timers.
Despite the grave shortage and inadequacy, physicians are often absent at their respective chambers during office time. And, most of the time painkillers are offered to patients as free medicines for the shortages in medicine stock while the unavailability of nurses acts as the barrier towards the provision of proper health services.
The report said many important medical instruments lie inoperative, while facilities for diagnosis and medical tests are nil. There is also a provision of supplying bed sheets and mosquito nets to the patients but patients are hardly provided with such items. It is observed that dirt and filth at the center give it the appearance of being nothing more than an abandoned building. The centre is really poor in look and service delivery.
There is no reason to believe that the center is a part of the country’s historic university and able to provide medicare to the students, teachers, and officers. Unpleasantly, the DU budget, though the biggest in the country’s public university, has made little allocation for the medical center.
Following the ranked universities in Europe and America, the University Authority must establish a full-fledged hospital where ordinary people can get specialized care and treatment. For that, besides the government, the alumni of the oldest university and businesses should extend their hand for setting up a full hospital that provides treatment not only to the DU family only but to ordinary citizens also.
