Infections Rise as Hygiene Fails in Vidarbha’s Hospitals

thenewsdirt
6 days ago
9 min read

At a major hospital in Nagpur last year, six patients who came in for routine treatments ended up contracting dengue within the very wards meant to heal them.

This alarming incident was not isolated. Over the past five years, government hospitals across Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region have repeatedly come under scrutiny for unsanitary conditions and lapses in infection control that put patients at risk.

From filthy wards and locked toilets to stagnant water pooling on campuses, these problems have fueled fear and public distrust in the healthcare system.

Official investigations and reports reveal a pattern of hygiene failures with real consequences for patient safety and health outcomes.

Unhygienic Conditions Across Vidarbha Hospitals

Many public hospitals in Vidarbha suffer from chronic cleanliness lapses that go beyond occasional neglect. Inspections have uncovered heaps of garbage, choked drains, and puddles of dirty water on hospital premises.

At Nagpur’s two largest government medical colleges, city health officials found trash piling up near wards and hostels, with stagnant pools becoming mosquito breeding sites.

In fact, these campuses were served multiple notices by the municipal corporation after patients being treated for other ailments turned dengue-positive while hospitalised. It was common to see food waste and disposable cups strewn around, attracting insects and even rodents in the wards.

Basic sanitation facilities have also been in disarray. Toilets in many wards are often either locked or in such a filthy condition that patients avoid them altogether. At one government medical college, some washrooms were found bolted shut, while the single accessible toilet was so unclean as to be virtually unusable.

The stench of unclean bathrooms seeped into corridors, forcing patients and their families to seek alternatives outside. Such scenes have turned hospital campuses into what one official described as a “horrible state of affairs,” undermining the environment needed for healing. In smaller district and rural hospitals, the situation can be even more dire. Some community health centres operate with only one sanitation worker for the entire facility. If that lone cleaner is absent, there is no backup, meaning basic cleaning might not happen at all. These conditions lay fertile ground for infections to spread within places that are supposed to cure illness.

The neglect extends beyond just visual cleanliness. Inadequate sterilisation of medical equipment and poor enforcement of hand hygiene protocols have been reported in several facilities. In some district hospitals, these lapses contributed to post-surgical infection clusters.

For example, at the government medical college hospital in Yavatmal, over a dozen new mothers who underwent Caesarean deliveries in one month developed serious surgical-site infections instead of recovering normally. Instead of being discharged after ten days, many of these women were still bedridden weeks later in the postpartum ward due to infected incisions.

Relatives of the patients alleged that hospital staff ignored early warning signs. One family recounted how a mother kept complaining of severe pain until pus and blood were seen oozing from her stitches, finally prompting doctors to act.

An inquiry was ordered into that outbreak, but a senior doctor shockingly downplayed the issue by saying such infections were “routine in any hospital.” This kind of complacency toward infection control illustrates how deeply rooted the problem has become.

Hospital-Acquired Infections and Patient Safety

Poor hygiene in hospitals directly endangers patient health. Vidarbha’s hospitals have seen multiple instances of hospital-acquired infections and even outbreaks tied to unsanitary conditions.

The dengue cases in Nagpur’s Indira Gandhi Government Medical College (commonly known as Mayo Hospital) are a stark example.

In 2022–2023, at least six patients being treated at Mayo Hospital contracted dengue during their stay, presumably from mosquito breeding spots in and around the wards. Civic officials confirmed these patients had been admitted for other reasons but fell ill with dengue due to the hospital environment.

Visiting relatives, medical staff, and students were all at risk as clouds of mosquitoes bred unchecked in waterlogged corners of the campus. Similarly, in Yavatmal’s maternal ward incident, the cluster of post-operative infections meant that patients who should have recovered swiftly were kept in the hospital for weeks, needing heavy antibiotics and further procedures.

Such nosocomial infections (infections acquired inside the hospital) prolong suffering and can turn deadly. Doctors warn that when a patient fighting one illness picks up a new infection from the hospital itself, their recovery becomes far more complicated. Treatment costs mount as stronger antibiotics and longer hospital stays are required, and this, in turn, contributes to antibiotic resistance in the community. Hospital-acquired infections can range from surgical wound infections to respiratory and gastrointestinal bugs, and their prevalence reflects the state of infection control practices.

According to global health data, roughly one in every ten patients in low- and middle-income countries catches an infection during a hospital stay. Vidarbha’s government facilities have, unfortunately, borne this out in real life.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, infection control weaknesses became even more apparent. Quarantine centres and isolation wards set up in the region were reported to have dirty toilets, a lack of running water, and cramped spaces.

Several patients in Nagpur actually fled from COVID isolation facilities, citing unhygienic and unsafe conditions as the reason. In court documents later, it was noted that these patients feared catching another infection from the filthy ward more than they feared the coronavirus itself. When hospitals themselves become a source of illness, it creates a frightening dilemma for those in need of care.

Patients who might otherwise trust the system have started to question whether they will leave the hospital healthier or sicker than when they entered.

Public Distrust and Outcry

For many ordinary people in Vidarbha, witnessing such conditions has severely eroded confidence in public hospitals.

Patients and their families often express anger and dismay when they see dirt-caked floors, unchanged bed sheets, or swarms of mosquitoes inside a ward.

In some hospitals, relatives have taken it upon themselves to clean areas around their loved one’s bed, bringing disinfectant from home, a vivid indicator of lost trust. Others simply avoid using hospital amenities, it is not uncommon for patients to skip using the hospital toilet or water facilities altogether, instead finding a restroom elsewhere, to reduce their exposure to germs on-site. These behavioural shifts speak to the level of discomfort and fear among the very people the hospitals are meant to serve.

Unsurprisingly, such conditions have led to public outcry and media scrutiny. Local newspapers and TV channels have highlighted the deplorable state of hospital hygiene, often with stark images. Journalists have published photographs of overflowing biomedical waste bins, blood-stained linens, and even stray animals wandering inside hospital grounds, sparking public outrage. In one case, a video emerged of pigs roaming the premises of a civil hospital after a spate of patient deaths, underscoring that the issue is not confined to one region. In Vidarbha as well, public pressure has forced authorities to respond.

Hospital administrators who previously overlooked complaints found themselves conducting sudden inspections of toilets and wards once these problems made headlines. The reputational damage to government hospitals has been serious. When people start associating hospitals with dirt and disease rather than healing, it undermines the very purpose of public healthcare.

The judiciary, too, has stepped in as the crisis drew wider attention. The Bombay High Court, while hearing petitions on healthcare conditions, remarked on the “unacceptable” state of some government hospitals after incidents of multiple patient deaths. In early 2025, the High Court expanded its inquiry beyond one incident to examine conditions across Maharashtra, including Vidarbha’s facilities.

The court was alarmed by reports of large-scale staff vacancies and underutilised funds, even as hospitals remained overcrowded and unclean. During one hearing, the judges noted that cleanliness and hygiene in hospitals must be treated as top priorities because “ultimately, it is about human lives.” They directed the state government to file plans for filling thousands of vacant healthcare posts and to explain why funds allocated for hospital upgrades were lying unused.

This kind of high-level scrutiny and the stern words from the bench reflected how public patience had worn thin. What used to be suffered in silence, like a dirty ward or a missing nurse, is now more likely to become a rallying point for demands to fix the system.

Systemic Challenges and Efforts at Improvement

Behind the poor infection control in Vidarbha’s hospitals lie deeper systemic issues. Chronic shortages of manpower and infrastructure have crippled routine maintenance.

Government audits in recent years confirm that Vidarbha faces one of the worst shortages of healthcare staff in the state, from doctors and nurses to cleaning and support staff.

Key hospitals often operate with far fewer ward assistants and sanitation workers than needed for their patient load. Older facilities suffer from decades-old buildings with leaking pipes, broken plumbing, and poor ventilation, making cleanliness harder to maintain. Many hospitals in the region are housed in ageing structures where sewage lines back up frequently and ventilation is inadequate, creating damp and unhygienic indoor air. Retrofitting these buildings is expensive and slow, so quick fixes rarely hold up, and problems like mould or plumbing failures recur.

Administrators have periodically attempted stop-gap measures and reforms. In Nagpur, the civic body has carried out intensive anti-mosquito fogging drives on hospital campuses and threatened legal action against hospital managements when breeding sites were found. The state government launched initiatives like “Kayakalp”, a programme ranking public hospitals on cleanliness and infection control criteria.

Some hospitals in Vidarbha, such as district hospitals in Amravati and Wardha, performed well in certain years and even won incentive grants for maintaining cleaner facilities. However, many others lagged behind in these evaluations. The programme’s audits pressured hospitals to improve basics like washrooms, waste segregation, and disinfection protocols, but compliance has been uneven.

Where especially egregious lapses came to light, authorities have sometimes responded by outsourcing cleaning services to private agencies. The idea was to bring in trained housekeeping staff on contract for more regular cleaning schedules. In practice, this yielded mixed results, without strong oversight, some contractors also failed to meet standards, and the cleanliness improvements were short-lived.

There have been a few bright spots amid the gloom. A newly established AIIMS in Nagpur, for instance, has generally managed to avoid these issues, as a modern institute, it was built with better sanitation infrastructure and adequate staffing from the start. In remote corners of Vidarbha, some non-governmental organisations have stepped in to help. In Melghat’s tribal area, an NGO recently helped upgrade water supply and sanitation at a small rural hospital, reducing instances of waterborne infections there.

These examples show that improvement is possible with focused effort. But they also highlight the gap. Many of Vidarbha’s hospitals remain trapped in a cycle of neglect, only seeing temporary fixes when a crisis erupts or media spotlights them. Frontline healthcare workers themselves often bear the brunt of these failures. Nurses and doctors have had to work in dirty, uncomfortable environments that sap morale. Sanitation staff, where present, are overburdened by large facilities and sometimes lack even basic equipment and protective gear to do their jobs safely.

Every stakeholder, patients, staff, and administrators, thus, feels the strain of poor infection control. As one medical superintendent acknowledged during a recent inspection at Nagpur’s Government Medical College, “Regular inspections and strict enforcement of hygiene and patient care standards are necessary” to ensure quality care. He made that statement after intervening to unlock closed toilets and arrange cleaning when the hospital’s dismal conditions were exposed. It was a rare admission of responsibility. Going forward, maintaining such standards consistently (and not just after a scandal) remains the true challenge.

The patterns seen in Vidarbha’s hospitals carry a stark warning. When healthcare facilities themselves become breeding grounds for infection, the very purpose of a hospital is undermined. Over the last five years, countless patients in the region have learnt that a hospital stay can come with unexpected perils, a routine surgery leading to a dangerous infection, or a visit for treatment ending with a mosquito-borne disease.

These are outcomes that erode public faith and deter people from seeking care until absolutely necessary.

The growing public outcry and legal scrutiny suggest that infection control can no longer be treated as an afterthought in Maharashtra’s hinterland. For now, patients remain watchful and vocal, knowing that something as basic as a clean ward or a working toilet can spell the difference between recovery and a prolonged ordeal.