Hyderabad: The Telangana Doctors’ Association backed CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s decision to shift the TB and Chest Hospital to Vikarabad on Wednesday, accusing some Andhra doctors of encouraging protests by staff.

Mr Rao is determined to shift the hospital despite objections by the opposition Congress and TD besides a section of hospital staff, it is learnt. TRS MP Mr Narasaiah Goud, along with Dr Veeresham, president of Telangana Doctors’ Association and other members met Mr Rao here at the Secretariat on Wednesday.

However, the doctors requested the CM to ensure basic amenities like residential quarters etc. at Vikarabad. Sources said CM is likely to take a decision on utilisation of the Chest Hospital land in two or three days.

Shift will cost OMC 11 seats: Shabbir Ali

Telangana Congress vice-chief Mohammad Shabbir Ali, a former minister, demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao immediately withdraw his “autocratic and inhuman” decision to shift the TB and Chest hospital from the city to Vikarabad.

He said the move would not only severely affect patients but cost the Osmania Medical Hospital 11 post-graduate seats in pulmonology. Mr Ali accused Mr Rao of acting like a monarch, if not like Tughlaq who shifted the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad and back.

He said the 670-bed hospital gets nearly 200 patients with breathing or respiratory issues every day, and an equal number of HIV patients with TB co-infection. The hospital houses a 100-bed facility for HIV patients, which is the only one of its kind in India. He said patients at various stages of TB, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, lung cancer, swine flu and HIV would face inconvenience if the hospital is shifted.

“How can the government expect patients suffering from serious respiratory disorders to travel 70 km,” he said, adding that most of the patients who visit the hospital are poor. Travelling to Vikarabad would not only affect their health, but most of them would discontinue treatment due their inability to bear the travelling cost, he said.

There were also other issues that Mr Ali highlighted. He said it was illogical to shift a teaching hospital attached to the Osmania Medical College. He said that the chest hospital would lose 11 PG seats in pulmonology which was recently permitted by the Medical Council of India.

As per MCI rules, a teaching hospital should be located within an 8-km radius of the medical college. Therefore, the OMC would lose the 11 PG seats due to the shifting of the chest hospital.

The shifting of the chest hospital would also affect nearly 300 staff including 50 doctors, he said. Mr Ali said Mr Rao was initially planning to convert the hospital land into a parade ground. Now he wants to construct a new Secretariat.

“The Secretariat will be half empty once the Andhra Pradesh government shifts base to its new capital. Therefore, there is no need for a new building,” he said while rejecting the Chief Minister’s proposal to construct high-rise buildings in the place of present Secretariat.