The new five-storey building of the Government Lady Goschen Hospital was inaugurated on Saturday, a day after getting fire safety clearance from Director General (Fire and Emergency Services) M.N. Reddi.
The full-fledged functioning of the hospital from the new building had been kept in abeyance pending the approval.
The outpatient ward, help desk, scanning centre and a few other units have been functioning from the ground floor of the new building from March 2018. The post-natal ward was moved to the first floor in July 2018.
M. Veerappa Moily, former Chief Minister and Chickballapur MP, who worked to get the funds for the new building, said on Saturday he spoke to Mr. Reddi to get the file cleared on Friday.
“The bottleneck for full-fledged functioning from the new building is now cleared,” he said in his speech at the inaugural function. With the fire-safety clearance, the labour room and a few operation theatres will shortly function from the first floor while the post-natal ward and the neonatal ward will function from the third floor. The operation theatre and intensive care units will function from the fourth floor and the general ward will be on the fifth floor, said doctors overseeing the work at the new block.
It was in 2011 that a part of the busy government maternity hospital was demolished for construction of the new block.
After a donor from Andhra Pradesh backed off from providing money for the construction, the ONGC and the MRPL came forward to share funds from its corporate social responsibility fund.
The two PSUs have given ₹28.9 crore of which ₹21.7 crore was towards building while ₹7.2 crore was towards instruments.
Mr. Moily said the association of two PSUs with the hospital can be continued if the State government passes an order assigning them the responsibility of running the hospital. District in-charge Minister U.T. Khader said the two PSUs should consider adopting the hospital.
Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers D.V. Sadananda Gowda, Nalin Kumar Kateel MP and MRPL Managing Director M. Venkatesh also spoke.
