Sans road, patients carried on cot to hospital in Odisha's Ganjam district

BERHAMPUR: With no motorable road, patients continue to be carried on cots to hospital in Ankuli panchayat under Patrapur block of Ganjam district. Emergency ambulance services are not accessible to the villages for patients in the absence of roads to their areas. People have no option but to carry patients on cots up to any motorable road where an ambulance can come to carry them to the hospital.

According to reports, most of the villages in the panchayat are surrounded by dense forest and hilly areas which lack communicable roads. In order to reach the main road in Tadakasahi village at the foothills, villagers either walk through a nine-km stretch dense forest route or sail through Baghalati reservoir by traditional boats.

In 1998, the reservoir was constructed for irrigation and since then, villagers depend on waterways to reach the main land at Tadakasahi. Though a road was constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 2.61 lakh in 2010, later it was damaged due to lack of repair and maintenance. Now, the Irrigation department has sent a proposal to the State Government to construct a concrete road from Tadakasahi to these villages at an estimated cost of Rs 17 crore.

Recently, 35-year-old Sita Nayak of Sirisigandi village, who was sick for the last few days, was carried on a cot to cross Baghalati reservoir and reach Tadakasahi from where she was shifted to Patrapur hospital through ambulance. Similar incidents are galore in the area.

Locals said taking patients in emergency cases is a difficult affair. Though people’s representatives had drawn the attention of the district administration several times in the past towards connectivity problems, nothing has been done as yet. They demanded approval of the proposal sent by Irrigation department for construction of cement concrete road to their villages.

They alleged that though the block comes under Chikiti Assembly segment and has been represented by ruling BJD since 2000, no step has been taken to provide motorable road to these remote villages.