Hygiene a major concern at CSTM

Kolkata: Maintaining hygiene has become the major cause of concern for the officials of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine (CSTM) as most of its indoor and outdoor wards are infested with rats and bed bugs causing serious problems to the patients.

The hospital authorities are not, however, leaving any stone unturned to stop this menace and holding meetings on how to check the bugs and rats. Rats are giving a serious challenge to the hospital authorities as cages kept in the wards fail to catch them.

Having found no option, the top brass in the CSTM have issued instructions to carry out anti-pest drives in both the indoor and outdoor departments of the hospital.

There were around eight wards in the hospital and 150 departments are functional in the CSTM which is one of oldest hospitals that deals in tropical disease. Sources said that that almost all the wards of the hospital have been infested with thousands of pests including rats, cockroaches, bug. Even the cost of tackling the insects has spiraled.

It may be mentioned here that CSTM is fully dedicated to research and the treatment of various tropical diseases. It was established in 1914 by Leonard Rogers who was a professor of pathology at the then Calcutta Medical College. Prominent researchers including U N Bramhachari, Ronald Ross, Rabindra Nath Chaudhuri worked in this prestigious institution.

What is more worrying here for the hospital authorities is that lots of efforts were taken up, various methods were tried out but no permanent solution has been achieved.

Whenever there is a pests control programme in the hospital, the number of the insects go down for a while but the situation soon comes back to square one.

The senior officials of the hospital recently instructed to spray various pesticides in the indoor and outdoor departments from time to time. The officials are also in a fix on how to check rats as they are not falling prey to the traps. They hospital authorities are avoiding killing if rats with spiked food as it would make the wards uglier.

How to get rid of bed bugs is also a concern for the hospital as the patients undergoing treatment at the hospital often complain of bed bugs. The doctors and nursing staff

members are not spared too. If the wards are infested with these insects there is always a possibility for the patients catching infections.

An official of the hospital claimed that anti-pest drives are conducted at the hospital at regular intervals but it fails to completely remove the insects from the wards.