Prasuti Griha, the maternity hospital at Thapathali, has been in the news lately. The Paropakar Sanstha, which founded the hospital in August 1959, is demanding that the management of the maternity hospital be handed back to them, saying that conditions have deteriorated since the government took over in 1989.

Prasuti Griha has a reputation for providing excellent service. On an average, about 15,000 women deliver their babies here annually. (Princess Shruti had both her daughters there.) Almost a third of these are deliveries with complications. Prasuti Griha started with 40 beds, and now has 310 beds and an average of 140 patients, including about 12 requiring surgical procedures, visit the hospital every day. It has separate departments for obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, anaesthesiology, nursing and pathology, and 13 support service units. Seventy percent of the beds are free as are neo-natal intensive care and other ICU services. Comparable services cost about Rs 3,500 per day in most private nursing homes.

"I don't know how others were treated, but I faced no difficulties here," said Shanti KC who was returning home after giving birth to a baby girl, her second delivery at the Prasuti Griha. "You can feel a motherly aura about the whole place."

"So far we have been able to provide each of our patients with proper beds," says the hospital's director, Saraswati Padhyaya. Ninety percent of the hospital's 565 staff are women. Their only problem seems to be the Sunday holiday. "Sunday is a holiday, but not for us. The government does not compensate us for any overtime we might put in. We continue to provide services because it would be altogether unethical not to do so. You just can't leave patients alone because Sunday is a holiday," says Padhyaya.