Destitutes In Necessity Of Carers Are Housed In Rehabilitation Ward
Update: 2021-09-21 13:23 IST
Destitutes In Necessity Of Carers Are Housed In Rehabilitation Ward
The rehabilitation ward, which was set up around nine months ago at the Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) to house patients who had been abandoned by their families, now has abandoned appearance to it, with no social workers or NGO volunteer caring for the patients.
On December 31, last year, the 12-bed rehabilitation unit on the first floor of the Trauma Care Centre (TCC) block was opened. Patients who have been abandoned by their relatives or who do not have caregivers are treated in the ward until they can be recovered. With the intervention of the police and social welfare, the patients would be sent to shelter houses or reunited with their family after they recovered..
The ward, which has been managed by a social worker from the city-based NGO Idhayam Trust from its establishment, has also had a staff nurse and a GRH sanitation worker placed as ward in-charge as an additional duty.
The dedicated rehabilitation ward was established at the hospital in December of last year, just days after the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) issued a notice to the Director of Medical Education (DME) regarding an incident in which a 35-year-old injured, homeless man from Godhra in Gujarat was allegedly shunned by the GRH staff due to the lack of a caretaker.
The ward at GRH, a first in South Tamil Nadu, was set up a fortnight after a rehabilitation ward with 40 beds was inaugurated for the first time in Tamil Nadu at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai.
Meanwhile, at February, a petition was filed in the Madras High Court's Madurai Bench, asking for an order to build specialised wards for abandoned children