Date:01/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/01/stories/2008120159410500.htm

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Post Mumbai attacks, hospitals beef up security

M.L.Melly Maitreyi

Association of Health and Hospitality Administrators discuss disaster management at a special session

NIMS in the process of coming out with suitable security steps
OGH to seal multiple entry points and install metal detectors soon

HYDERABAD: After the numbing terrorist attacks in Mumbai and amid fears that hospitals which attract large number of people could become vulnerable soft targets, security measures in major hospitals have come under review.

In fact, this issue that engaged the hospital administrators in the ongoing national conference of Association of Health and Hospitality Administrators (AHHA) on Saturday. A special session was held on disaster management in hospitals including the fall out of a terrorist attack.

A hospital could not be turned into a fortress as patients from all walks of life visit it for treatment.

Hospitals were being perceived as sitting ducks in the wake of the terrorists attacks -- Cama in Mumbai and two government hospitals in Ahmedabad in July, they added.

AHHA general secretary and Global Hospitals Chief Operating Officer M.Veera Prasad said that tight security measures were in place in some corporate hospitals for the last one year in the city.

Tight security

“In addition to installing door frame metal detectors, security staff at Care Hospital, Banjara Hills and Global Hospitals, Lakdi-ka-pul frisk the baggage of attendants. Regular security drills were held to keep the staff prepared for any eventuality”, Dr. Prasad said.

Nizams’s Institute of Medical Science Director D. Prasada Rao said they were in the process of coming out with suitable security measures as the hospital built in 1964 had multiple entry points.

Osmania General Hospital Superintendent V. Ashok Kumar said they were on constant vigil with 16 armed policemen guarding the hospital at any given point of time, a separate enclosure to keep baggage of patients besides public address system to alert and educate visitors. “We will be sealing multiple entry points and install metal detectors soon ,” he said.

Gandhi Hospital Superintendent B. Balaraju said they had written to the government to beef up security measures by sanctioning more security personnel and equipment as also providing barbed fencing to the hospital compound wall.