"The nursing and medical staff of Sadar Hospital do not treat the patients properly and discriminate against them," Senior Medical Officer of ART, Kulbir Sharma, said today.
The nurses call the HIV positive patients as "dirty people" and also react negatively if they venture into another patient's ward, the SMO said.
"This doesn't happen with other patients but specificially with HIV positive patients," Sharma charged.
He also held the Hospital's Medical Officer Iqbal Singh responsible for not spreading proper information about the disease through sensitive dialogue and communication.
"As some medical staff found it difficult to communicate about the disease, boards were put up depicting information, however these were thrown out with the excuse that this is not an AIDS hospital," Sharma said.
Asked about the allegations, Singh said, "Sharma should have spoken to me about these problems first. We can solve the matter through dialogue."
Meanwhile, Punjab Health Minister Madan Mohan Mittal, when asked about the charge at a press conference here, said he would talk to the Health Minstry Secretary and then take a decision.