Destitute home to be set up at District Hospital

KOCHI: The Ernakulam District Hospital is all set to launch a destitute home, the first-of-its-kind in the country to be started by a government hospital, to rehabilitate patients who have no one to take care of them after they are discharged from the hospital. “The destitute home is a new concept.Only primary talks have been held and we are working on it,” Hospital Superintendent Dr M I Junaid Rahman told Express.He said the proposed destitute home would be the first- ofits- kind in the country to be initiated by a government hospital. Most of the time, after the patients are discharged from the hospital, they are not taken care of and they have nowhere to go, he said.“Now these patients are left with no place to go and the concept for building a destitute home originated after seeing their plight,” he said. Though there are destitute homes in the district, the poor are really left out and are just abandoned in the streets, he said. The number of destitute people is increasing and the rehabilitation centres are overcrowded.The proposed centre will be a big relief to the neglected ones. Rahman said talks were being held with Union Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs K V Thomas and District Collector Sheik Pareeth in this regard.A final decision in this regard will be taken only after holding further discussions, he said and added that a meeting would be held at the earliest. He said the destitute home would be built outside the hospital compound.When asked about the proposed plan on the infrastructure and the finance to run the home, Rahman said he could not disclose more details on the project as it was just in the initial phase. The Ernakulam District Hospital has always set an example in introducing innovative projects. It was recently that the hospital established a dietary kitchen, which is aimed at providing balanced and nutritional food free-of-cost to its inmates