Beautifully Ugly

At a time when healthcare should offer comfort and healing, the Chest Diseases Hospital in Srinagar stands as a painful paradox, where advanced treatments meet crumbling infrastructure and neglected care

- Faizaan Bashir

When I first walked up to the Chest Diseases (CD) Hospital in Srinagar, I expected a place of hope.

After all, this is the region’s primary institute for treating respiratory illnesses, a critical service in a valley where air pollution, smoking, and damp winters only worsen health problems. What I found instead was an unsettling contradiction: a hospital full of skilled doctors and committed staff, yet wrapped in neglect and structural failure. It was beautifully ugly.

The doctors at the CD Hospital do their best. They move with purpose, attend to patients with care, and often extend their help beyond the hospital walls. Some remain in touch with families at home when the patient’s condition is grave. These men and women are genuinely dedicated, and their work deserves applause.

Still, the building itself feels trapped in a cruel irony.

I saw patients struggling to climb steep gradients and stairs, many of them gasping for air, their lungs failing them, while attendants carried them up by hand.