The functioning of hospitals in West Bengal, government as well as private, has been called into question by the apex level of the state bureaucracy. Many if not most of them have been insensitive to a shocking degree; i.e. patients are being asked to furnish what they call “Covid-19 negative certificates” to get admission.

To put it bluntly as we must, this is almost institutionalised negativism. A more evasive approach to healthcare would be difficult to imagine. It is hard not to wonder if the murk has extended in parallel to the virus. The establishment ~ the Chief Minister downwards ~ has been jolted to its foundations with the death on Sunday of Dr Biplab Kanti Dasgupta, Assistant Director of Health Services, Central Medical Stores, which controls the procurement and supply of medicines to treat the virus.

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A more cruel irony would be hard to imagine. Decidedly depressing are reports that authorities of Kolkata’s MR Bangur Hospital, dedicated to ensure care and cure of Covid patients, are not shifting bodies of patients for hours. Granted that it takes at least four hours for a death certificate to be issued, there can be no excuse for the inexcusable ~ to leave the body unattended and what is infinitely worse, next to a patient.

Small wonder that such a gut-wrenching visual went viral over the weekend. The formalities after death are the least that can be expected of the hospital authorities, the fact that the Chief Secretary has had to intervene points to the negligent nochalance towards death in the ward.

“Bodies of Covid- 19 patients should immediately be shifted to the mortuary,” was Mr Rajiva Sinha’s stern directive to hospitals in general. Which is not to deny that doctors and nurses have not been afflicted; one member of the nursing profession at Howrah District Hospital, who had tested positive, is said to have afflicted no fewer than 17 newborns.

The other major problem that is faced by relatives of patients in hospitals is the inordinate delay in crafting test reports, in the absence of which treatment cannot start for any illness. Particularly distressing must be the fact that test reports are available at the hospital counter five to six days after collection of the sample.

Hence the Chief Secretary’s directive last Saturday that results of Covid tests must be ready “within 12 hours of the sample collection”. This is the norm in pathological centres; the crisis has deepened with the utterly casual approach towards fundamentals.

No less alarming is Mr Sinha’s revelation that “we have received reports that some medical colleges and hospitals in Kolkata have refused patients”. That remarkable insensitivity has provoked the Chief Secretary to iterate the express policy of “zero tolerance”.

Not wholly unrelated is the request to private hospitals to not refuse non- Covid patients, a malaise that extends to some hospitals around the country. Saturday’s directive by the Chief Secretary reaffirms that hospitals are in crisis. The patient, whether Covid or non-Covid, deserves better. So too must the departed.