PESHAWAR, Aug 19: Patients in city’s various hospitals are facing a new menace of cockroaches, which are increasing in all wards, visits to the city’s hospitals revealed on Monday.
“We pass sleepless nights at the hospitals because of the large number of cockroaches here. There is no escape from these insects because they are present everywhere in bathrooms, beds and bedside lockers of the ward,” said patients at the surgical ward of Lady Reading Hospital. According to them, there was only one cleaner in the whole ward who cannot clean the entire ward. These cockroaches can be even seen in the operation theatre which is more sensitive place in the hospital.
Doctors at the hospitals argue that the insecticides spray was in short supply due to which the number of cockroaches was increasing. Apart from causing embarrassment to the patients, these cockroaches are also the source of transmitting serious infections to the patients.
A doctor at the LRH told Dawn that the patients were in the habit of keeping edible items in the bedside lockers which was also the breeding source for the cockroaches. Though the patients did not use these things, still the visitors bring fruits and other eatables when they visit the hospitals to inquire after the health of their relatives.
Another cause which provides breeding space to these insects is that the cleaners of the wards who do not clean the dustbins in time. Besides cockroaches, these dirt-filled drums also produce foul and stinking smell which haunt the patients, doctors and visitors. The doctors argue that at times, even normal patients get infected with dreaded diseases due to lack of cleanliness at the hospitals.
The situation in other two relatively clean hospitals — Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex — is no good either. Not only the patients but these cockroaches have become nuisance around the necks of hospital staff. They can be found in doctors’ offices, medical stores and clinical laboratories alike.
In fact, inadequate supply of insecticides to these hospitals have paved the way for insects to groom. The wards in the hospitals are being sprayed with insecticides once in a month which is not enough to eliminate these insects on permanent basis.
A doctor at the medical unit of the KTH said the hospital’s store was short of insecticides but they arrange for the commodity from the donations they collect from the pharmaceutical companies.
He said they spray the ward with insecticides twice a week which keeps the insects away from the ward.