Non-governmental organisations should extend help to the Department of Social Welfare in rehabilitating the ‘patients’ of the destitute ward, Ward 9, at General Hospital, most of whom are disease-free but have no homes to go back to, K. Muraleedharan, MLA, has said.
At a meeting of the monitoring committee for ward 9, chaired by Mr. Muraleedharan, here on Wednesday, it was pointed out that the overcrowding of the ward had made it difficult to provide care to those who actually required it. In such a situation, it was imperative that some permanent arrangement was made to rehabilitate the inhabitants as soon as they became well enough to be discharged.
The ward has the facility to admit 55 persons. In the past week, 18 of the inhabitants had been rehabilitated and four of them had to be brought back to be admitted to the hospital. At present, there are 68 patients in the ward.
It was suggested that the District Collector take steps to rehabilitate those who had been rejected by their families. Often, persons found lying on the streets in an inebriated state were being dumped in ward 9 by the police. Mr. Muraleedharan said that he would talk to the City Police Commissioner on taking such persons to de-addiction centres. Those patients with mental illnesses would be shifted to mental health centres with the consent of the Chief Judicial Magistrate.
The Regional Director of Social Security Mission Maj. Dinesh Bhaskar; Deputy Collector V. Chandrika; District Medical Officer T. Peethambaran; and General Hospital Superintendent A. Faseelath Beevi attended the meeting.
