TWILIGHT YEARS: A place above casket shops
Sonia Ramachandran
2009/01/18
And the building faces a cemetery.
Welcome to Rumah Kasih , a home for those abandoned at Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL).
This is home for 38 residents, some very chronically ill but all abandoned or with no place to go.
Climb the narrow staircase of this building and you will see T-shirts hanging to dry on the landing.
Enter the door and you will be greeted by the sight of rows of beds lining both sides of the room spanning the length of the whole building.
On these beds are elderly men and women, including an amputee, a burn patient, a hit-and-run victim with an ulcer on his foot, and a man with breathing difficulties who lugs an oxygen tank around.
Part of HKL's community services, the home was the idea of the hospital's former director, Datuk Dr Abdul Razak Kechik.
From 2003 to 2005, there were 496 aged persons abandoned at HKL, with the number rising from 122 in 2003 to 238 in 2005.
"The number of those abandoned increase every year and it has become a problem," says the home's senior manager, Foong Peng Lam, a retired senior medical technologist from HKL.
"There are about 4,000 outpatients in HKL daily and many of them need hospitalisation but the hospital only has 1,250 beds."
Abridged
SOURCE: The New Straits Times Online
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