Shimla, August 17
Om Prakash, a psychiatric patient deserted by his family members, is lying in the General Medicine Ward of Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC), here, for the past two months and waiting to be shifted to Mental Health Institute at Ranchi for treatment.
Several requests of doctors for shifting another patient, Rajesh, to Ranchi went futile and he was discharged after six months from the IGMC.
A patient suffering from a serious mental ailment could not be admitted in the IGMC today because both beds reserved for psychiatric patients in the ward were occupied.
Neither are there a sufficient number of doctors, nor adequate beds for the mentally challenged patients who share the general ward with other patients.
This is contrary to a stipulation of the Mental Health Act, 1987, that states that separate wards be provided for even four categories of mental patients which include minors of below 16 years of age, criminals, drug addicts and others.
There is a waiting list of patients who require to be admitted to the hospital. The OPD of the Psychiatry Department consists of only one dingy room on the first floor.
This is the treatment that the mentally challenged patients are receiving in the IGMC, the leading health institute of the state.
The state government has failed to provide proper facilities for psychiatric patients who not only deserve topmost attention, but also a humane touch by the doctors and para-medical staff.
Although the Medical Council of India stipulates that at least 10 beds in a separate ward be earmarked for psychiatric patients, here such patients were sharing only two beds each in the male and female medicine wards with other patients.
The authorities were not bothered although the MCI is learnt to have pointed out the shortcoming in its inspection reports.
Attendants of such patients point out that referring a patient to Ranchi or Varanasi involves a long procedure as the Director of Health Services has to write to these institutions after receiving a recommendation from the Head of the Psychiatry Department which is forwarded to him by the Medical Superintendent and the patient can be taken there only after receiving a green signal from there.
The patients are taken to these places as there is no mental health institute in Himachal Pradesh. Ten beds are reserved at Ranchi for the patients from here. The building of the mental health institute here is lying incomplete
for the past about three years.
There is only one professor and a post-graduate registrar in the Psychiatry Department. Its OPD remains closed whenever these doctors have to go out for court attendance and the patients coming from far-flung places of the state have to come again.
Not a single doctor has been recruited under the centrally-sponsored district-level mental health programme which was launched three years ago. The Centre had provided Rs 19.21 lakh for the programme for which psychiatrics and social workers were to be recruited in all districts.
Not a single post of specialist has been filled for the mental health institute for which 19 posts have been recommended.
Doctors say that at times the seriously mentally ailing or violent patients could prove dangerous for others as they share the general ward of the hospital. Sometimes, policemen are deployed to guard such psychiatric patients.
