Mysore/Mysuru: Patients and their attendants, who come to the nearly a century old Cheluvamba Hospital, adjacent to K.R. Hospital, are greeted by the ugly footwear pile dumped at the passage near the entrance of the hospital.

Cheluvamba Hospital and K.R. Hospital are both Tertiary Referral Centres and Teaching Hospitals attached to the Mysore Medical College and Research Institute (MMC&RI). Cheluvamba Hospital offers service to the routine obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatric patients, it has specialised units providing neonatal care, paediatric surgery, diarrhoeal diseases treatment and immunisations to mention a few. Hence, poor patients especially from rural side visit this hospital frequently. 

After admitting the near and dear ones at Cheluvamba Hospital, the patient’s relatives or attenders are not allowed to stay with them in the ward. They have to spend the nights outside (there is no shelter for them at the hospital). 

They are called only when the doctor attends to their patient or only when necessary. While going inside the ward, they are asked to remove their footwear and when they come out of the ward, their footwear is gone. It is then the cleaning staff informs them that they have dumped their slippers or shoes outside the hospital in order to  maintain cleanliness.

When the patient’s attendant rushes out, he is unable to locate his footwear amidst hundreds of slippers and shoes and is hesitant to search for his/ her footwear with bare hands as it is unhealthy and walks  away barefoot. 

The leftover footwear has piled up since a month. This has become a routine for the patients’ attenders and relatives and the footwear pile is growing huge day-by-day. This dumping of footwear has not only become a bane for them but is also turning unhealthy, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic around.

M.S. Gururaja Shetty, a resident of Devaraja Mohalla, who had come with his friend’s relative to Cheluvamba Hospital, told Star of Mysore that it is the cleaning staff, who remove the footwear left behind at the entrance of the ward and throw them into the footwear pile outside. 

He further said: “We support and encourage cleanliness, but there should be a proper way for everything. How can the hospital staff expect the public to search their footwear dumped in the pile with their bare hands?, he questioned and added that the hospital authorities should think over and instruct the staff or make some facilities for the public to leave their footwear outside before entering the hospital.

R. Pramod Gowda, also of Devaraja Mohalla, who had come to meet a relative admitted at the hospital for delivery, said that there is not even a shelter for the patients’ attenders and relatives to wait outside before meeting their near and dear ones admitted in the ward. 

He further said that a zinc sheet or asbestos sheet shelter has to be erected near the hospital’s entrance for waiting and also a rack has to be put up to leave the footwear before entering the hospital. 

He said that this facility would avoid the ugly scene of footwear pile at the entrance of the hospital and the patients’ relatives or attenders could leave their footwear outside and ask their accomplices to keep  a watch over it.

The public have urged the hospital authorities to take steps to prevent piling of footwear at the entrance of the hospital.

Footwear stand at all wards

Earlier, footwear stand was kept at the entrance of all wards. Relatives and visitors of patients do not follow rules. They have broken the footwear stand kept earlier. Now, steps have been taken to keep the stand at the entrance of all wards in the hospital and instruction to keep their footwear in the stand is also given, but most of them are not co-operating. Though instructions have been given to follow COVID-19 guidelines like wearing face masks and maintaining social distance, many are not following and five to six people come to visit the patient and they sit around the bed, despite hospital staff telling them not to do so. The co-operation of the public visiting patients is very much necessary to maintain hygienic atmosphere at the hospital. Facility to keep footwear in the stand would be made soon, says Dr. Pramila,  Medical Superintendent,  Cheluvamba Hospital.