OPINION
Where would you expect to read about a major hospital with rats in beds, mice around the operating theatre, and cockroaches in the meal trays?
The slums of Bombay? Squalid Venezuela? The “world’s worst”, in Guatemala?
How about Dandrewstan?
Victoria’s major trauma hospital The Alfred is being overrun with rodents with faeces found on beds and mice running around patient rooms and the operating theatre.
Internal logs have revealed the neglected and run down hospital has been plagued by a major pest problem with staff reporting it is crawling with mice and rats.
FOI investigations have uncovered squalid conditions at one of Australia’s biggest hospitals, Melbourne’s major trauma centre, and teaching hospital.
Rodent faeces have been found in patients’ beds, while mice have been seen running around hospital bedrooms.
The pests have also been reported in patients’ personal belongings, in operating theatres, staffrooms and communal areas […]
Serious concerns have also been raised about issues at Sandringham Hospital and Caulfield Hospital where a snake, bugs, foxes, and cockroaches have been spotted.
Both hospitals are operated by Alfred Health.
In one incident a nurse at Caulfield Hospital’s aged care facility reported finding and removing a 25cm snake.
The hospital has insisted the reptile was actually a worm.
Gosh, that makes it all better, then. It’s only worms in the hospital, not snakes.
On just one night in April nurses at The Alfred reported seeing mice “on multiple occasions” including inside a patient’s room.
On another night in April several mice were found “squeaking loudly, running from one end of the ward to another, and ruffling through the makeshift bin.”
A night earlier a “patient was heard screaming” and “climbing on top of (a) dining table, reporting that she had been scared by a mouse.”
Other patients have reported seeing mice in their belongings and on their beds.
The third-world conditions extended to the hospital’s “prehistoric” operating theatres, which are over sixty years old.
Bugs have also been reported flying around patients waiting for surgery, with one insect landing on a “sterile field of operation”.
At Sandringham Hospital, cockroaches have been found crawling on patient meal trays. The state government has come under increasing pressure to increase funding The Alfred, where Premier Daniel Andrews was treated after a fall last year.
Ewww. If it’s not bad enough, having cockroaches and rats crawling around, they have to put up with Dan Andrews befouling their wards, too.
Shadow health minister Georgie Crozier said the extent of the infestation demonstrated the dire state of one of Australia’s major hospitals.
“What should be a showpiece is instead a shambles,” she said.
“Patients and staff deserve better and it’s not good enough for the Andrews Government to simply blame others for their neglect of Victoria’s health system.
Herald-Sun
Labor has run Victoria for all but three of the last 25 years. Victorians have no one to blame but themselves.
If they’re going to keep voting for rats and cockroaches in Spring Street, they shouldn’t be surprised to find them turning up in the Alfred.