Hospital next to graveyard spooks Karnataka villagers

KALABURAGI: A single-storey government primary hospital built three years ago with a fully equipped delivery suite has not seen the birth of a single baby yet because the institution sits on the edge of a graveyard in Bidar's Bagadal village, about 700km from Bengaluru.

Under the belief that babies born in the building next to the graveyard will eventually become ghosts hovering around, villagers do not prefer this hospital for institutional deliveries. Instead, they go to the earlier PHC building, which is about 1km away.

The village with a population of 20,000 is famous for a dargah, visited by thousands of faithful every year.

Sources said the district administration chose to construct the building near the graveyard as the land belongs to the government. Most of the wards and wings in the hospital with limited beds face the graveyard, which is dotted with hundreds of covered and open graves and some are a stone's throw from the new building.

The hospital's administrative medical officer Dr Sandeep Ghode said child-delivery requests do not come though it has facilities almost on par with the best in the industry in this region. The building, inaugurated two years ago, is meant to serve at least 20 villages.

Bidar district health officer Dr Jnaneshwar Nidgode told TOI they have been reaching out to villagers, asking them to use the new hospital without apprehensions. But the response has so far been far from encouraging, if not cold outright.

However, villagers do go to the outpatient department for fever, cold, and other basic ailments, which do not call for overnight stay.