Sinduja Jane By Express News Service CHENNAI: Hundreds of patients and attenders in the Orthopaedics and Head Injury building at the Royapettah Government Hospital are put to hardship after the lift became dysfunctional last week and the management has been struggling to repair it as its annual maintenance contract expired over two years ago. The five-storeyed building houses departments such as Emergency, Department of Urology, Head Injury and Plastic Surgery and Orthopaedics Department. While attenders and staff climb up the stairs adjacent to the dysfunctional lift, the workers take patients up to the second floor of the adjacent building from a lift there. From the second floor, again the patient has wheeled back to the Orthopaedics and Head Injury building through a connecting way of the two buildings. From there, through Orthopaedics ward in the second floor, the patients are taken via ramp to the third to fifth floors. “It is an exhausting job even for workers who have to balance weight of the patient in wheelchairs. I have a hairline fracture in my foot. Doctors advised me not to walk. But, every day I am climbing up to the fifth floor to the Urology unit to see a relative,” said a patient attender. Though blood and urine samples are collected in the ward itself, only attenders have to go to labs to hand them over, says Sharmila, an attendee. “Moreover, for buying milk, water and food we have to get down and climb up again,” she added. Shakeela, another attender, whose grandmother was admitted to the Ortho ward, said,” It becomes difficult if the patient have to be taken down for scan or X-ray. We have been suffering for the past one week.” Meanwhile, speaking to Express a senior doctor said, “The annual maintenance contract expired. Funds for this quarter are yet to be allotted by the government. It usually allocates `3 lakh for electrical maintenance. We are waiting for it.”“While crores of rupees are being allotted for the new buildings and equipment, it is sad to see that there are no funds for annual maintenance. The lift fell into repair a week ago,” said a source.

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