Etymologists define it hospitale.

Builders call it aspatal.

For the owners, it represents profits, for the patients, it is a question of survival.

And for the officials, it symbolises a large medical facility in a building where physically ill are given medical and/or surgical treatment.

Everybody else calls it hospital that can question the utility of the precious public fund (Of Disaster Management?) to contain the pandemic-COVID-19. 

As a financial issue, KMM hospital in Chas block of Bokaro district in Jharkhand may not have had the high profile of the multi-million rupee health scam unearthed by the CBI in Ranchi in the past.

But, few,within the Hemant Soren led government in Jharkhand, harbour illusions about the possibility of misuse of public fund following its simple decision to set up the COVID-19 Centre at a private hospital KMM in highly populated town-Chas.

KMM hospital,owned by relatives of a senior BJP  leader, is located in a multi-storey building where a hotel was functional some time ago. That is past. 

Today,it is a private hospital in densely populated Chas where the district health department led by Civil Surgeon A.K.Pathak and Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Kumar are learnt to have planned to admit and treat COVID-19 patients as 'a second line of defence' in future.

Future when 90 -bed Bokaro General Hospital of the PSU- Bokaro Steel Ltd gets packed up with China virus patients. Right now only 40 COVID 19 plus patients were undergoing treatment there. One of them had died in Bokaro.

As it is, Bokaro is encircled by coal belts having high profile PSUs such as DVC and Bokaro Steel Ltd. They have their own hospitals, each with experienced and trained doctors, nurses, paramedic staff, and are located in the outskirts of Bokaro where COVID-19 patients can not spread China virus among people.

Unlike these PSUs' hospitals which can be used and turned into as COVID -19 Centre without the state government incurring  any expenditure from its disaster management relief fund, KMM private hospital has to be paid the rent for the deal as it's management is not run by any non-profit making organisation.

More, since this KMM private hospital with doctors, nurses and staff who were paid on a contractual basis,was lying shut due to the absence of patients in these days of countrywide lockdown, its management appears to have preferred to enter into a business deal with the state administration.

Soon, the state health department  transferred doctors, nurses and staff of the Sadar hospital and other hospitals of the government in Bokaro and posted them at private KMM hospital so that it gets ready to serve.

This was not acceptable to Dr Sudhir Singh( name changed to protect identity).

" Look at the game of these senior officials.KMM has just one entry-exit gate. It is located in dense human habitation areas in Chas. And, instead of rejecting it on these two prime grounds, they opted to have it as a second line of defence to serve COVID-19 patients there", he said.

When Bokaro DC Mukesh Kumar was approached for comment, he declined to reply."Video Conference is going on, please."

Bokaro CS A.K. Pathak said: "It (KMM)has the infrastructure to serve COVID-19 patients."

However, neither Pathak nor Kumar have explained so far why they did not set up COVID-19 Centre in Sadar hospital or PSU hospitals, each with a sufficient number of doctors, technicians and nurses, run by DVC and BSL in outer zones of Bokaro.