Garbage in Sion hosp poses health hazard for doctors

Intern doctors at civic-run Sion are worried sick for their lives as they live opposite a pile of garbage and scrap. With the monsoon showers coming down hard they worry the place will soon become a breeding ground for vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria. “We don’t have hostels allotted to us and are living in barracks. The area is like a dumping ground and has tin roofs. At the moment, with the renovation of our toilets on, we don’t even have a running water supply,” said Pratik Maraswad, President, Association of State Medical Interns (ASMI) who is an intern at Sion Hospital. Last year a doctor living in JJ hospital quarters had succumbed to dengue. Mumbai has already reported 128 suspected dengue cases in the first two weeks this month apart from 14 confirmed cases, according to latest BMC data. There are 166 confirmed malaria cases. Both dengue and malaria are mosquito-borne illnesses.    Of the 105 interns at the hospital who are in their final year of the five-and-a-half-year MBBS course, 55 live in the hostel. The ones raising alarm bells are 30 students housed in the British-era Barrack number 18. They have also written a letter to the dean of the hospital, Dr Suleiman Merchant. Sion hospital is also grappling with a shortage of labour staff which was to be filled by outsourcing the jobs to contract staff. “We have already initiated steps to improve the condition. These barracks are very old and tenders will be floated soon,” said Dr Merchant. “There is a proposal to outsource labour staff against a large number of vacant posts. The situation should improve once that is through,” he added.