Reza Mahmud :
Thousands of patients in three major hospitals in the city’s Mohakahali are in captivity condition due to makeshift shops, illegally parked vehicles and gridlock.
National Institute of Cancer Research (NICRH) and Hospital, National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH), and Sheikh Russell Gastro Liver Institute and Hospital are situated at Mohakhali and the hospital trio’s entrance and exit is only a tiny street. It started from the opposite side of the Gausul Azam Masjid in Mohakhali.
The entering point of the hospital trio is locally known as TB gate, which is hazardously shrunken with makeshift shops and parking of hundreds of cars illegally on both sides of the streets.
The influential persons are blamed for the makeshift shops occupying both sides of the street.
The vehicles including patients carrying ambulances and life saving medicines, oxygens, and other important medical equipment and products cannot get easy passage for above reasons.
Even the pavements are also blocked with the makeshift shops.
In spot visits for two days it has been found that makeshift shops were established from the beginning of the TB gate.
Several shops are even found on the pavements.
Some rickshaw vans have been found locked by a chain with rods on the pavement.
It seemed that the rickshaw vans used to keep there regularly.
The shop keepers were found busy with
selling their products to hundreds of customers when the streets face gridlock for illegal shops.
Meanwhile, several cars and motorbikes were found occupying a big portion of the street illegally on both sides of the NIDCH which were shrinking the road barring vehicular movements acutely.
With the severely ill patients of the three hospitals, hundreds of the covid vaccine seekers also are facing the sufferings there every day.
Even foreign diplomats, who were given jabs in the Sheikh Russell Gastro lever Institute and Hospital, also faced the troubles.
“The government established those important hospitals spending crores of Taka but the people become reluctant to go there only to avoid the suffering,” said a prominent Supreme Court lawyer, who went there for taking Covid-19 jab recently.
He said, how the makeshift establishments can do business blocking road to the life saving hospitals!
When contacted, the authorities of those hospitals also expressed anxiety.
They said that influential persons are behind the presence of the makeshift establishments there.
“We, all the three Directors of the hospital trio repeatedly discuss about the problems. We called police to evict all of those illegal shops from the way of the three very important hospitals. The police frequently remove those shops but the influential persons set those again and again. We are helpless,” Professor Dr. Faruk Ahmed, Director of Sheikh Russell Gastro Liver Institute and Hospital, told The New Nation. He said the problem only can be met with participation of all stakeholders there.
“The influential persons must consider the patients first,” the Director said. He asked all to come ahead and give the humanitarian issue on top priority instead of making money.
