Medicine shops’ shifting from Capital Hospital campus opposed

BHUBANESWAR: The All Odisha Campus Chemists Association (AOCCA) has opposed the Capital Hospital authorities’ decision for shifting of campus medicine shops to a vending zone following the proposal of the State Health and Family Welfare Department to expand the hospital recently.

After the hospital expansion proposal, AOCCA member Akhaya Kishore Das said, the medicine shops were directed to shift the utility complex where small rooms have already been constructed. The accommodation of medicine shops in those tiny rooms with 10xl2 ft size wouldn’t serve their purpose, he added.

Das said the utility complex was far away from the causality of the hospital. In the vast area of the hospital, different departments stand at different places and the medicine shops also do so, he said, adding, “It becomes easy now for the patients to approach different shops freely to get their medicines, but, when all these medicine shops will be centralised in one place, it will cause a lot of congregation and problem of sanitation.”

Das further said the numbers of medicines in our country has exceeded more than 50,000 and varieties of medicines enter into market day by day according to the demands of rising population which requires a spacious room for accommodation. It is also essential that minimum two refrigerators are highly required for the preservation of weather proof medicines and with Air conditioner, he said, adding, “How is it possible that those tiny rooms can accommodate two freezes with minimum 15 sales boys to move freely for the service of the patients day and night?”

The AOCCA requested the hospital authorities to allow the medicine shops to stand at different directions of the campus with easy approach to the causalities and for which lands should be provided to the shop owners to build their medicine shops from their own funds.