The much-awaited new hostel for students of Government Stanley College Hospital is ready for occupation. According to the college authorities, the keys would be handed over either on June 30 or July 1.
The three-storey building will accommodate around 300 undergraduate and 140 post graduate students. The main lounge of the hostel branches out into several corridors along which 250 well-ventilated rooms fan out. While PG students will each have a room to themselves, three undergraduates will share a room. The CRRIs (compulsory rotatory residential internship) candidates will continue to occupy the rooms above the casualty block or will be moved to one of the existing hostel blocks until the new quarters for them, capable of accommodating 150 students, is ready.
The proposal for the new hostels project was made in May 2007 following the death of a house surgeon and hospitalisation of 18 medical and nursing students, allegedly due to spread of an infection. The then Health Minister K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, who inspected the premises after the students refused to return to class, directed that four blocks of hostels and the students' canteen be demolished.
The new hostel building was formally declared open before the Assembly elections, but work on acquiring the equipment for the dining hall and the kitchen was taken up only recently, said sources in the Public Works Department, which implemented the project.
Stanley Medical College Dean J. Ravishankar said the accommodation for women students would be ready in another three to six months. The hostels are coming up behind the building housing the Institute of Social Paediatrics, which is also being renovated. In an effort to ensure that the students have privacy, the government had moved the hostels away from the hospital, he said.
There is also a proposal to build a hostel for nursing students in the now defunct workshop belonging to the PWD. A new building for nursing school on the premises is also under consideration.
Meanwhile, the PWD is awaiting permission to demolish the old hostels. According to PWD sources, work on the new buildings had slowed considerably in the past few weeks following disruption in supply of sand.
Hospital Block
Also taking shape on the main hospital premises is a seven-storey building to house the casualty, emergency and trauma wards on the ground and first two floors. Medical wards would be accommodated on the remaining floors. The building, with 2.16 lakh sq.ft., is being built at a cost of Rs.41.20 crore, said K. Sivaprakasam, Medical Superintendent of Stanley Hospital.
The college's alumni association has made a representation to the State government to build a separate administrative block for the Dean, Medical Superintendent and other administrative heads. It has also suggested that the rest of the old buildings, including a portion of the old hostels, could be used to develop twin tower blocks and expand the hospital.
Senior officials in the hospital, some of them alumni, are working on ways to develop the medical college. While there is ample space and scope to develop the hospital, the college, with its various constraints, now needs new buildings to expand. The alumni association members say that the college needs space to develop laboratories and a separate block for anatomy, in order to comply with the Medical Council of India norms.
