All not well at BBMP health centre, Deputy Mayor finds

Medicines past their expiry dates, absence of doctors, loads of dust on equipment used in the dressing room and broken floor tiles. This was what Deputy Mayor N. Dayanand found during his inspection of a BBMP primary health centre in Vasanthanagar on Thursday.

Visibly upset over the poor maintenance of the health centre, the Deputy Mayor called up Chief Health Officer (CHO) L.T. Gayatri Devi and took her to task.

When duty doctor P. Satish and staff nurse Florence Menaka pointed out that the refrigerator in the centre was not functioning leading to unsatisfactory storage of medicines, Mr. Dayanand directed the CHO to ensure that the problem is set right at the earliest.

Appalling conditions

He asked the officials to replace the broken tiles at the earliest. “It is unfortunate that the health centre is functioning in unhygienic conditions, especially at a time when the city is witnessing an outbreak of dengue, chikungunya and other vector-borne diseases,” he said.

He later inspected the Tuberculosis Unit on Broadway Road and directed the staff there to discard expired drugs. Irked by the absence of doctors in the unit, the Deputy Mayor questioned the staff about it. He was informed that the unit did not have a permanent doctor.

He inspected the Corporation Unani Dispensary on Kambal Posh Road and found that the dispensary did not have any stock of drugs.

During his inspection of the BBMP High School and P.U. College for Girls on Dispensary Road, Mr. Dayanand found that one of the walls of the college was in a dilapidated condition.

Responding to a request by the college staff for a playground, he promised that the palike would look into the issue and to get the wall repaired at the earliest.

Argument

The Deputy Mayor had to face some embarrassing moments when a heated argument ensued between the husband of the area corporator, Farida Ishtiyakk, and the staff of New Hilal Hotel in Shivajinagar.

Acting on behalf of his wife, Ishtiyakk Ahmed took the hotel staff to task for not maintaining cleanliness in the hotel and threatened to get the licence cancelled.

Irked by this, the hotel manager shouted back at Mr. Ahmed and an altercation ensued between the two. The police had to intervene to bring the situation under control.