Hospital Ward
Polish hospitals in a bad technical state says Supreme Chamber of Control of the Republic of Poland
Warsaw, Poland 2 February, 2010 - “Old, depleted, without fire safeguarding or disabled access”. Such is the state of Polish hospitals according to the Polish Supreme Chamber of Control.
The chamber of control, together with the Fire Department and building inspectors investigated 48 out of more than 800 public health care centers in Poland and found most of them to be technically unsound.
More than two-thirds of the hospital buildings were found in desperate need of costly renovations, without which they pose a potential threat.
A main concern noticed was that hospitals weren’t keeping their fire safety in check. Many buildings didn’t have designated evacuation stair cases and wards and corridors were not confined from smoke which would in the case of a fire spread throughout the building and disrupt visibility and air supply on emergency access routes.
Those routes didn’t meet technical requirements either, often being too long or too narrow. Hospitals also lacked emergency lighting, and 80 per cent of the inspected hospitals had insufficient fire extinguishers, hydrants or alarms.
In some cases the control chamber even noticed that some emergency exits were made with easily flammable materials.
Fire fighters found more than half of the hospitals weren’t accessible for them. In case of emergency fire fighters would have to battle with blocked aisles and in the worst hospitals they wouldn’t be able to get their equipment to the fire at all.
Half of the hospitals were also poorly designed and the physically disabled weren’t able to independently access the buildings, their many floors or bathrooms. And these faults weren’t just in 50 year old buildings, but in those build more than 15 years ago.
Polish hospitals have until 2012 to get their accessibility up to scratch.
60 per cent of hospitals weren’t on schedule with their annual technical inspections and 40 per cent didn’t have their compulsory five-yearly control. The chamber of control found that in many of the hospitals that did have their regular monitoring up to date the technical inspections were done by unauthorized specialists.
Some of the problems were sorted out at the time of the inspections so already the situation in Polish hospitals is technically better.
The 48 hospitals were in the kujawsko-pomorskie, lubelskie, ma³opolskie, mazowieckie, podkarpackie, pomorskie, œl¹skie, warmiñsko-mazurskie and wielkopolskie provinces. The investigation was for the 2006 – 2008 period with inspections between April 1 and July 31 2009.
By Victoria Ziarkowski
Freelance Writer
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