Mysore/Mysuru: With the city’s biggest Hospital, the K.R. Hospital turning into a COVID treatment Hospital, all the Operation Theatres (OT) of the Hospital have been closed temporarily. As a result the poor patients, who look up to this Hospital which is popularly called as ‘Doddaspatre’ for their health care, are put to a lot of hardship.

At present, 80 patients suffering from SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Illness) are in the IPD (In-Patient Department) wards on all the four floors of the Hospital. They are kept here with oxygen support until the COVID-19 test lab reports are out.

As COVID-19 patients are being treated as in-patients, all the 18 Operation Theatres (OTs) of K.R. Hospital have been closed and as such no surgeries are being performed now. On normal days, the doctors used to perform about 30 surgeries on an average every day.

As the OTs have been shut, doctors at Departments  such as General Surgery, Plastic Surgery, Urology, Orthopaedics and ENT have been referring patients to Private Hospitals, where treatment is expensive, thus driving the poor patients to a lot of difficulty.

Virtual exam

With operation theatres at it’s attached Hospital (K.R. Hospital) closed, the MMC&RI has been forced to conduct computer-based virtual exam for MBBS and Post-Graduate students after the cancellation of practical exams due to shutting down of operation theatres.

OPD closed for Half-day: Adding more problems for poor people, the Hospital’s OPD (Out Patient Department) has restricted its working to half a day. As a result, the number of patients visiting the OPD has dwindled, with hardly 200 patients visiting the Department everyday as compared to over 1,000 patients on normal days in the past.

The huge dip in the number of patients has become a cause of worry for medical students and as well as the teaching faculty, as both theory and practical classes have taken a severe hit.