What Lies Behind the Door

Kashmir's public hospitals promise healing but can't provide basic hygiene. What lies behind the toilet door tells a different story.

- Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili

The patient attendants who line the corridors of Kashmir’s public hospitals know the routine.

One waits for word from the ICU. Another recites verses under their breath. A third paces with his eyes on the floor. Behind them is always a need that no one wants to talk about: the search for a usable toilet.

In hospitals across Kashmir, what stands behind the bathroom door is worse than anyone deserves.

Walk into any washroom at SMHS, Lal Ded, or a district hospital, and the picture is predictably grim. Water stagnates on the floor. Foul smells rise from open drains. Taps are either dry or leaking. The commodes, often cracked or blocked, are unusable. Soap dispensers lie empty. Doors don't lock. The stench carries into the corridors, where patients sit with IV drips and fasting attendants try to pray.

In these conditions, ablution is impossible. Relief becomes shame. And the body becomes a site of stress when it should be healing.

This isn’t rare. It is routine.

The bathrooms in Kashmir hospitals haven’t seen meaningful upgrades in years. The cleaning, where it happens, is cosmetic. A swipe of a mop, a splash of water. The filth remains.

The logbooks meant to track sanitation lie untouched or don’t exist. When you ask the staff, they offer tired honesty: “We do what we can.” One cleaner at a government hospital told me that entire wings have toilets with no running water for days. “We pour buckets,” he said. “That's all.”