A hospital in search of a cure  Premium

 OGH, a century-old hospital, is in need of help. Its buildings, some of which date back to 1926, need repairs. The Telangana govt. has proposed to demolish all 29 buildings and build a new facility with 1,812 beds. The High Court has intervened and asked for a structural stability report. A panel has recommended conservation repairs, while another has suggested demolition. The govt. has filed a counter-affidavit in the High Court. Doctors are concerned about patient care being disrupted. OGH is part of the city's identity and its heritage should be protected.OGH, a century-old hospital in Hyderabad, is in need of help.

 Three men, riding together on a scooter, arrive at the Osmania General Hospital (OGH)’s in-patient facility on a Tuesday afternoon. The one in the middle carefully gets off the two-wheeler and trudges inside, to an overcrowded, overworked out-patient department, supported on the shoulder of the pillion rider. The third man proceeds to locate a parking spot in a hospital so overcrowded he may have to park outside. The scene is reminiscent of a comical sequence from the 2009 Hindi film 3 Idiots, but is, in fact, a glimpse into the everyday experiences of people seeking medical care at Telangana’s top tertiary government hospital.   

On the face of it, Hyderabad’s OGH is an institution, some of whose buildings date back to 1926, need help. Nearly a century on, the toilets are frequently flooded and often unusable, while patches of ceiling in almost all the buildings peel off and come crashing down. But when the Telangana government decided to demolish all the 29 buildings and bring up new ones with 1,812 beds, across the 24-acre campus, there was resistance. 

Every day at the hospital kitchen makes food for approximately 900 patients. At the laundry, about 1,100 bedsheets are washed, ironed, and folded. It is this scale of operations that has stretched the limits of the hospital, originally built for 400 patients. Currently, each patient is accompanied by at least two attenders, adding further pressure to the system.

Vijayender  P.S., who served as chairman of Telangana Junior Doctors Association (TJUDA) during his study period at OGH from 2016 to 2019, recalls a portion of the ceiling falling on a patient in 2017. “At that time, the hospital administration and the government called for a contractor and made temporary repairs. After that, such incidents continued to be reported from across the hospital. If the government had taken proper control of the situation at that time, maybe we would not have reached this stage where we have to talk about demolition,” he says. 

The building, one of four in the city in the Indo-Saracenic architecture style, was envisaged and executed by Vincent Esch, an established British architect in India. The style was developed by the British in India, fusing elements of Islamic design and local materials. 

In 1866, when it was at another location and called Afzalgunj Hospital, people came in from across the Nizam’s Dominion that stretched to modern day Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. The OGH is also part of the riverfront rejuvenation project initiated in the aftermath of the devasting September 1908 flood which claimed 15,000 lives. The other buildings along the stretch are the Kachiguda Railway Station, Telangana High Court, and City College.   

“Without the series of domes of OGH, the landscape will not be the same. It is part of the identity of people and the city here. The Telangana High Court had ruled in the Irram Manzil case that heritage is part of identity. The existing buildings should be protected while another must be constructed to improve healthcare for a growing city,” says Sajjad Shahid of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.