The African heat is also taking its toll on patients in hospitals. One of the facilities that does not have air-conditioned rooms is the 116th Military Hospital in Opole. A listener contacted our radio station, pointing out that stuffy and overheated rooms should not be the norm in such a hospital and encouraging the city to invest in the modernization of the hospital.
– The health service suffers from a lack of air conditioning, and this is a specific hospital, because it is a military one – says Mr. Bogdan from Opole. – A few years ago, war also seemed absurd to us. Imagine a person injured by a bullet fragment, who suffers here, and still suffers from the heat. I know that the city has money to donate to some purpose, and the purpose could be, for example, air conditioning in a hospital, which is theoretically a military one, because in peacetime people are treated there normally.
The subject was addressed by the commandant of the 116th Military Hospital in Opole, who in his response informed that “the problem that the listener reported to Radio Opole is a problem that we are currently trying to solve using temporary measures (fans, window blinds) and in the near future, during the modernization of the wards, we plan to install air conditioning in the rooms or at least some of the rooms. Unfortunately, for financial and technological reasons, we cannot equip all the patient rooms with air conditioning at the moment, however we will strive to improve this situation”.
Adriana Mazurkiewicz-Fornalik, the board’s representative for patient rights at Stobrawskie Centrum Medyczne in Kup, points out that in the summer period, there is usually an increase in the number of patient complaints in hospitals regarding the lack of air conditioning in medical facilities.
– However, according to the applicable legal regulations, there are no guidelines stating that air conditioning should be installed in patient rooms – he adds. – The regulations only state that air conditioning should be installed in operating rooms, intensive care units or isolation wards, but there is no requirement for air conditioning in patient rooms. Of course, all medical entities, as part of the development and expansion of infrastructure, try to increase this comfort for patients, but it is always an individually considered matter in which a given entity will invest financial resources.
In the University Clinical Hospital in Opole, cooling systems in patient rooms appear during renovations. – An example is the pediatrics ward, which was modernized in 2021 – says Edyta Hanszke-Lodzińska, spokeswoman. – We also plan to replace the heating and cooling system in the entire hospital as part of a comprehensive thermal modernization project for hospital buildings, for which we obtained funding from the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management.
Let us add that the National Health Fund settles money only for medical services, not for the modernization of hospitals. However, Opole as a city does not manage any hospital, hence there is no possibility of transferring financing for such an investment.