As another death-knell has been sounded for the Osmania General Hospital (OGH), a 2013 plan to save the heritage building and improve the medicare in the facility appears to be the only hope. The plan, which has been through multiple iterations, now exists in four formats according to its creators.
“We made the plan without compromising the heritage character of the campus. OGH’s visibility and the presence on the site is very important for the city. Architecture is judged by the visibility,” says conservation architect G.S.V. Suryanarayana Murthy about the plan by Kshetra which was submitted in January 2013.
This was much before the Telangana government unveiled its plan to pull down the building and build two skyscrapers in their stead in 2015. The architects submitted a 500-page report that detailed every room, ventilator, jack-arch, and later additions to the vast complex. The four plans with one that estimated a ₹345 crore outgo with addition of 91,000 sq metres to ₹535 crore outgo for an addition of 137,450 sq metres are from 2020. The plans involve new buildings spaced around the old heritage site by limiting their height to 19.2 metres.
“The heritage building has a height of 16.2 metres and it will continue to dominate the site visually. The additional buildings will help improve the quality of healthcare in tune with modern times,” says Mr. Murthy.
In 91-92, around 62% of the budgetary allocation to the hospital was spent on salaries, 20.98% on consumables, 2.49% on food, 0.73% on equipment, 8.79% on water and electricity and 0.05% on transport. There was zero allocation for maintenance of the building. The result is there for us to see.
In 1995, Japan stepped in to help improve the OGH. Its study report prior to beginning the work noted: “It is 70 years old and generally superannuated. The fact that the piping of water supply and wiring of electricity are exposed outside the building shows that the building has been repaired several times. Generally, the facilities are not in good condition”.
Nearly two decades later, things brightened up for the OGH when K. Rosaiah, former Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh, visited the hospital in 2010 and issued a GO. MS313 allocating ₹200 crore over three years to build a multi-storied complex on about 12 lakh sqft. space. The plan involved demolishing the Nursing College and Hostel to create six acres of open land for undertaking the construction. The heritage building was to be renovated and used for running out-patient, administrative and support services, once the new blocks were constructed and occupied. But the plans remained on paper when Telangana was carved out as a separate State.
“We are having a shortage of beds as the number of patients has increased since the old building was abandoned. It is becoming difficult to treat patients as we cannot turn them away,” said OGH Superintendent B. Nagender.
