Errant hospitals to be blacklisted

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Feb 8, 2011: After several warnings, the GVMC is now getting ready to act tough on hospitals putting patients’ lives at risk by not complying with mandatory fire-safety norms.

After the tragic fire mishap at a hospital in Kolkata last year, it was reported and highlighted in these columns that many hospitals in Vizag city are also potential death traps in the event of a fire mishap as most hospital buildings lack fire fighting equipment.

Responding to the reports, GVMC commissioner Mr B. Ramanjaneyulu held a high level meeting with representatives of all hospitals coming under GVMC limits. The GVMC commissioner set a deadline of January 26 for hospitals to do self assessment of their buildings and submit check lists to the civic authority.

Though the response was very poor in the second week of January, by the time of the deadline, around 97 hospitals submitted their checklists to the authorities.

Of the 97, around 40 hospitals paid challans to the GVMC seeking no objection certificates (NOC) stating that their buildings have all fire-safety equipment and some are willing to install them in a time bound manner.

Now, with the deadline is over, the GVMC is mulling to wield its whip against errant hospitals. As a first step, these will be blacklisted and notices served on them to create awareness among people.

The list of errant hospitals will also be put on the GVMC website and will also be well publicised.

In the second step, licences will be cancelled and the final resort will be demolishing the hospital buildings.

“We are going to take action in a pragmatic manner in phases and this will begin within a week. We are scrutinising every checklist submitted by the hospitals carefully. Hospitals cannot put patients lives at risk,”

GVMC’s city planner Venkata Ratnam told this correspondent.

Hospital buildings which have four floors come under the GVMC purview.