The fire at a pharmacy store of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital sparked a scarcity of medicines on the campus on Wednesday.
The pharmacy store, run by the state health department, provides free medicines to patients admitted to the hospital. An official of the store said the fire had damaged medicines and medical equipment worth Rs 5 crore.
The fair price shop on the campus, which usually remains open round the clock, was closed till the evening because power supply had been snapped.
Many patients had to return from the hospital without medicines on Wednesday.
Pradyut Biswas, an employee at Life Line Drug House, the fair price shop, said medicines could not be sold for much of Wednesday because lack of power prevented generation of bills.
“The store that was gutted was the main store on the campus. The other stores on the campus are much smaller. Medicines are sent to the smaller stores from the main store,” a hospital official said.
Asked about the depleting stock of medicines at the hospital because of the fire and whether the authorities would make arrangements to procure medicines, a senior hospital official said: “Our stocks will last till Friday. By then some arrangements will be made.”
Suchitra Sarkar, who had come with her son Debabrata to the hospital’s psychiatry outpatients department, had to return empty-handed from the fair price shop. “My son stays well only if he takes his medicine. The drug is expensive and we cannot afford to buy it from stores outside the hospital,” said Suchitra.
Minati Sharma had visited the fair price shop to buy medicines for her mother-in-law but met with the same fate as Suchitra. The employees of the shop advised her to visit some other pharmacy.
“The hospital authorities have told us to supply medicines to the wards as we remain open round the clock. The wards will send us their requirements of medicines and we will accordingly arrange for the supplies,” an official at the fair price shop said.
The hospital will pay Life Line Drug House for the medicines, which will be distributed free to patients.
As there was a prolonged power cut, people started asking whether some life-saving drugs that required to be stored in deep fridge could be saved.
“These medicines can be stored for 10 to 12 hours without power. But if the power cut continued for a longer duration, we will be in trouble,” an employee of the store said in the morning. The situation did not arise as power supply was restored in the evening and the fair price shop reopened around 6pm.
Indranil Biswas, medical superintendent and vice-principal of the hospital, told Metro that there were two other distribution outlets at the hospital and patients could take medicines from there.
In the Bagree Market fire last month, medicines worth several lakhs of rupees were damaged.