Hospital Inspector's Notes

Here's a short summary of my experiences in the three very different Indian hospitals I saw the past nine days.

Bhimtal health centre was not much of a hospital. It's state owned, so the only payment they took was a registration fee of 13 rupees. The town itself is to small to have a real hospital, but the health centre is enough for taking care of basic health needs. The hygiene was appalling, but a person only familiar with western hospitals could say the same about the two other hospitals as well. The doctor we saw there was very friendly and he spoke excellent English.

Krishna hospital and research centre in Haldwani is a private hospital. For three days there including all the medicine and tests, we paid around 15 000 rupees. The hygiene was better, but there were a lot of cockroaches as well. The room we had was a single bed one, but there was one berth for family members on the other wall. The doctors and nurses were very helpful, although the latter only knew broken English. It it's good that Niraj knew Hindi well enough to understand and to be understood.

The A.I.I.M.S. on Delhi was something completely different from the two other hospitals. The emergency ward alone is maybe twice the size of the Krishna hospital. Officially there are about hundred beds in it, but there area are always at least thirty or forty people lying on trolleys between the beds and on the corridors. There are always about ten doctors and ten nurses on duty and they are highly professional. It's mind boggling, how the doctors can treat as many patients simultaneously, especially considering that many of them are serious emergencies. In addition to the staff, a big responsibility for taking care of the patients falls on the one person allowed to stay with the patient. If the IV-drip needs to be changed, the nurses need to be chased and informed about it. When new blood results are due, the person has to look for the result slip from a separate table near the doctors' station. Then it's time to show the results to a doctor, who then decides on further treatment and medication. The newly prescribed medication then needs to be retrieved from the nurses' station and brought to the patient. There is a lot to do and nothing much happens to the patient, if the person with him isn't pestering the doctors and nurses enough. The most awesome thing about the A.I.I.M.S. It's that it is a state hospital, so we only paid the registration fee. The hygiene in the emergency ward was again not something to be compared to western hospitals. Mice and cockroaches running around, patients spitting and vomiting on the floor and blood and urine spilled on the floors and walls were things that I found hard to accept. Especially, because cleaning such a crowded place properly is nearly impossible.

As a summary I can say that I'm very much hoping to stay away from hospitals here. Of course I'm not so keen on being admitted to a western hospital either... I'm convinced that the staff is mostly just as competent here as in other countries, but the hygiene is something that scares me. I know it's probably for nothing, but I can't shake it off, no matter how I try.