Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital Bhowanipore is back in action
Thanks to the Liver Foundation and Gurdwara Sant Kutiya, Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital is offering OPD services and gearing up for more — proving that comebacks aren’t just for Tollywood stars.
In a heartening turn of events — the kind that makes you feel there’s hope for humanity after all — a rather sleepy building off DL Khan Road in Bhowanipore has finally shaken off its cobwebs and is getting back into the healing business. Yes, you heard that right. After more comebacks than a washed-up tollywood star, Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital is strapping on its boots for a fresh innings, starting Tuesday.
The hospital, originally opened in 1975, has had more ups and downs than the stock market on Budget Day. It ran for a few years before quietly dozing off, was roused again in 1990 for another stab at relevance, and then promptly fell asleep again in 2012. Bit of a Rip Van Winkle, this one.
But now, thanks to a rather admirable partnership between the Liver Foundation, West Bengal — a no-nonsense, not-for-profit bunch specialising in all things liver — and Gurdwara Sant Kutiya from Harish Mukherjee Road, the old dame has had a good dusting down and a proper sprucing up.
The result? A freshly painted, two-storey healthcare hub with three spanking new OPD (that’s Outpatient Department for the uninitiated) rooms on the ground floor and plans for male and female wards and a high-dependency unit upstairs. They’ve even got a blood sample collection centre that sends your claret off to the Liver Foundation’s main digs in Sonarpur for analysis. Modern science, eh?
If you’re feeling peaky, you’ll be pleased to know that the facility will soon offer day care procedures — endoscopy, colonoscopy, ultrasonography and the like — all without the usual palaver of hospital admissions. Just pop in, get probed, and be home in time for chai.
Speaking at the launch, Partha Sarathi Mukherjee, secretary of the Liver Foundation and clearly a man with a plan, said: “We’re starting with the OPD from Tuesday. Day care services will follow, and we’re looking to open a 40-bed hospital within a year.” Ambitious, one might say, but after this hospital’s checkered past, we’ll take ambitious over comatose any day.
The specialties on offer sound like a medical buffet — nephrology, hepatology, gastroenterology, gynaecology and obstetrics, pulmonology, neurology, and possibly a partridge in a pear tree.
The inauguration on Monday was graced by Swami Bodhasarananda of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, who remarked — rather sagely — that the not-for-profit sector stepping in where government and private healthcare can’t (or won’t) is very much the need of the hour. Quite right too.
Abhijit Chowdhury, the Liver Foundation’s chief mentor and someone who seems to know which way the wind is blowing, added: “Small hospitals run by the third sector are the way forward.” No arguments there — especially if the alternative is waiting six months to see a specialist or selling your left kidney to afford one.
Now, let’s not forget the good folks at Gurdwara Sant Kutiya, who actually bought the property back in the ’70s — a former Burmah-Shell guest house, no less. According to Avtar Singh, their general secretary, the gurdwara ran the hospital off and on before mothballing it in 2012 due to “operational challenges” — which we suspect is code for “too much headache, too little help.”
Fast forward to today, and the place has had a thorough makeover with about ₹3.5 crore already pumped in. Not a small sum, that. But they’re not in it for the moolah. “Our aim is not to make a profit,” said Mukherjee. “If there’s surplus revenue, it’ll go towards social work.” Quite the noble gesture, especially in an age where even your corner chemist seems to have a platinum rewards programme.
So, if you’re ever feeling under the weather and happen to be in Bhowanipore, you might want to pop by the new-and-improved Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital. It’s had more restarts than an ageing Windows computer, but this time, it might just be here to stay.
Fingers crossed — and stethoscopes ready.
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