Puri, May 4: Access to life-saving cardiac treatment in Puri’s main hospital is severely restricted, with patients able to receive timely care on Saturdays. Between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on this single day, the hospital’s sole cardiologist is available. For the remaining six days of the week, patients face uncertain outcomes.
This is not a story from a remote village but from Puri district’s primary hospital, serving nearly 2 million residents and over a million daily tourists. Shockingly, the facility has only one cardiologist, available for just a four-hour window on Saturdays. As a result, patients experiencing sudden heart attacks outside this time cannot access immediate medical consultation or treatment.
The hospital also lacks essential facilities for cardiac emergencies: there are no dedicated ICU beds, ventilators, or operation theaters for heart treatment. Doctors are not provided with advanced training to handle acute cardiac cases, placing patients’ lives at serious risk. Many patients arriving for urgent care are referred to hospitals in Cuttack, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, or private facilities, making survival dependent on timely travel. Each month, delayed or unavailable treatment leads to multiple preventable deaths from heart attacks.
Shree Jagannath Medical College provides some doctors and consultation services at the district hospital. However, it has not deployed any dedicated cardiologists, limiting its usefulness for heart patients. Plans to establish a 650-bed teaching hospital have failed, leaving patients dependent on insufficient local resources.
The construction of a 300-bed specialized medical wing at the district hospital has also been delayed, further constraining urgent care for cardiac and other critical patients. At present, the hospital has only six ICU beds for the entire population of 2 million, and lack of ICU availability has directly resulted in preventable fatalities.
Medical experts caution that without immediate upgrades to facilities and staffing, Puri patients will continue to face life-threatening delays during cardiac emergencies.
Dr. Akshay Satapathy, the Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO), has confirmed that Puri district’s main hospital currently has only one cardiologist on its staff. Despite issuing an official recruitment notice, no candidates applied for the post.
Following administrative efforts, Dr. Sushant Kumar Sahu from Utkal Medical College, Bhubaneswar, has been deputed to the hospital to see patients on Saturdays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. However, no cardiologist has been posted from Shree Jagannath Medical College, leaving heart patients without consistent specialist care.
The hospital’s upcoming 300-bed specialized medical wing is expected to expand its capacity for cardiac and other emergency patients once completed. Additional ICU facilities will also be added, but until then, residents will need to wait for improvements, the CDMO said.
