Bedbugs give Sassoon hosp patients sleepless nights

60 patients from psychiatry ward sleep on roads, garden outside hospital building, owing to infested wards

60 patients from psychiatry ward sleep on roads, garden outside hospital building, owing to infested wards

FOR the 60 patients admitted to the psychiatry ward of the Sassoon General Hospital, going to bed can be quite a sore experience. The wards are infested with bedbugs to such an extent that the patients and their relatives are compelled to slum it outside the hospital building in the garden or the road.


Forced to stay out: Patients and their relatives camp out in the garden

The psychiatry ward is situated in the oldest building at Sassoon and it was constructed 125 years ago. The ward has a capacity of 90 beds and currently, houses 60 patients. All the patients complained they had been not able to get a normal slumber in the ward since the last one month.


Beds from the ward are taken out to be sunned. Pics/Jignesh Mistry

HQ of bedbugs
"The psychiatry ward of Sasoon has become headquarters for the bedbugs," said a ward boy sarcastically. "The patients here don't fear the injections, but are afraid of the bedbugs. Some of them also tried to run away."

Senior nurse Pooja Kulkarni said, "Fumigation of the ward was done thrice in the past one month but the problem persists. We can still see a large number of bedbugs at night."u00a0Roshanbi Pathan, a parent of a patient, said, "The size of bed bugs is abnormally big. These bugs are trapped under the patient's body and leave red rashes on their bodies, where they bite them."

No easy solution
Dr Alka Pawar, head of the psychiatry ward said there was no practical solution to the menace. "The growing number of bedbugs are causing inconvenience to the patients. We fumigate the ward regularly, but now we need to seal the ward for a longer period to do away with the bugs, which is not practical," Pawar said. "Patients and their family members also inadvertently carry bugs from their village to the ward. So we have all species of bugs from all regions in Maharashtra," she said sarcastically.u00a0u00a0

'Pathetic situation'
The Maharashtra Institute of Mental Health (MIMH) is also doling out funds to help the hospital to exterminate the bugs. Dr Renu Bharadwaj, Dean, who visited the psychiatry ward to take stock of the situation, admitted the condition of the patients in the ward was pathetic. "We do spend on fumigating, but now we think stronger measures are required."

Expertspeak
Darius Narimon, technical advisor, Fini Pest Enterprises, said: "Organnophosphate Group is the best to control bedbugs, but they should be used before March prior to the onset of the summer. Monitoring after fumigation is a must. The Sassoon administration should also seal the cracks on the walls where the bugs can hide. Fumigating pests is a yearly activity and the Sassoon hospital must keep a separate budget for this so as to control bedbugs and cockroaches."

Workers reluctant
Workers deployed to fumigate the psychiatry ward were reluctant to do the work. "Fumigation is not our job and the hospital should appoint pest control experts instead of us," said a worker from the ward. "It is surprising that the hospital has six working unions and nobody even bothers to look into the bug issue."