A report from Anandabazar – Kolkata has documented serious hygiene concerns in kitchens serving patients at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital and NRS Medical College and Hospital, raising a larger question about why food-safety enforcement appears more visible in private restaurants than in public hospitals. The kitchens prepare and distribute meals to patients, many of whom are already medically vulnerable, making the condition of the food-production system as important as the quality of the food itself.
At RG Kar, the kitchen is located close to the administrative offices and reportedly prepares food for nearly 2,000 patients each morning and evening. The report describes an unclean access lane, cooking utensils and potato sacks lying outside, workers bathing at a tap inside the kitchen and clothes drying on a line. Open packets of powdered spices were seen on rusty, grease-coated racks. Food-distribution trolleys moving through hospital wards were also entering the kitchen, potentially bringing contamination from other parts of the hospital into the food-preparation area.
A construction activity was taking place along a narrow passage on another side of the kitchen, with cement and sand dust spreading through the area. The report presents these conditions not as an isolated housekeeping lapse but as a breakdown across several stages of food handling: storage, preparation, worker hygiene, movement of utensils and meals, and separation between construction activity and food production.
The timing of the report is significant. The West Bengal government has recently conducted inspections of hotels, restaurants, sweet shops and other food businesses across the state. During a seven-day drive at the beginning of the month, several establishments were found to have hygiene-related deficiencies. In Kolkata, the municipal corporation has taken action against 40 food businesses, with 35 of those cases reportedly involving failure to follow hygiene practices or maintain adequate cleanliness. Some establishments were closed, while others were given 15 days to correct deficiencies.
That enforcement drive created a clear public standard: food businesses can be inspected, named and directed to improve their kitchens within a specified period. The conditions reported at government hospital kitchens therefore raise a question of institutional parity. If open ingredients, dirty utensils or poor storage are considered unacceptable in a restaurant serving paying customers, the threshold should not be lower in a hospital kitchen serving patients whose health may already be compromised.
At NRS Medical College, the report found seven gas stoves arranged for separate cooking activities, including rice, dal, vegetables, fish, meat and tea. A drainage channel beside the last stove had become nearly an open drain because of accumulated waste. The kitchen floor reportedly had a greasy layer of dirt, and a grinding stone was lying on it. Open turmeric powder was also observed. A worker preparing dough for the evening rotis was reported to be without a cap and shirt at the time of the visit.
The kitchen manager, Prosেনjit Ghosh, said the drain would be cleaned and denied the presence of rats or cockroaches, stating that a mesh had been placed over the drain. He also said that officials from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the health department had inspected the kitchen. A staff member responsible for the RG Kar kitchen made a similar claim. However, the report said that the health department’s records did not mention those inspections.
This distinction matters because food safety depends not only on whether an inspection occurs, but also on whether it is documented, followed up and linked to corrective action. An undocumented inspection leaves no clear public trail showing what was examined, which deficiencies were found, who was responsible for fixing them or whether the improvements were verified later. For a hospital kitchen, where meals are part of patient care, the oversight chain should be especially visible.
The report found a better-maintained kitchen at Calcutta National Medical College. Its floor was described as broadly clean, while cooking utensils and spice containers did not show the same greasy black deposits reported elsewhere. The kitchen manager, Golam Barik, said that officials from Borough VII had collected samples of cooking ingredients about two weeks earlier, although the results had not yet been received. This comparison is important because it indicates that the problem is not necessarily an unavoidable feature of large institutional kitchens. Conditions can differ between hospitals, even when they operate within the same city and public health system.
The scale of spending has also changed. According to the report, the allocation for food supplied to patients was Rs 56.40 from 2017 and was proposed to rise to Rs 110 in the latest budget. The increase is intended to support patient meals, but a higher food allocation does not by itself guarantee safer preparation. The money must operate within a system that includes suitable kitchen design, cleanable surfaces, pest control, safe storage, protective clothing, waste management, drainage, sampling and regular inspections.
The distinction between the food budget and the kitchen system is central to the issue. Ingredients may be available and meals may be prepared on schedule, but food safety can still fail if raw materials are stored in open containers, if wastewater accumulates near cooking equipment, if construction dust enters the preparation area or if workers do not have appropriate protective clothing. A meal’s safety is determined by the entire chain rather than by the final plate alone.
Public health specialist Kajalkrishna Banik told the publication that people involved in food processing, preparation and distribution must maintain personal cleanliness. He also identified the need to examine how and where food is prepared, whether vegetables, fish, meat, eggs and rice are stored according to rules, and whether the people serving meals and the containers used for distribution are clean and disinfected. His warning is particularly relevant to hospitals: food prepared in unhygienic surroundings can be dangerous for patients and may cause further harm.
The administrative responsibility is spread across more than one institution. Hospital management controls the kitchen’s daily operation, staff practices, internal cleanliness and coordination with construction or maintenance teams. The health department sets or communicates requirements for hospital services and monitors implementation. The municipal corporation has a separate food-safety and public-health role, including inspections and sampling. When these responsibilities are not joined through documented reporting and follow-up, a kitchen can fall between departmental mandates.
The report also places the kitchens within a wider citywide enforcement pattern. Kolkata’s municipal action against 40 food businesses shows that the city has an active mechanism for identifying violations and requiring correction. Yet the contrast with the hospital kitchens suggests that enforcement may be operating more effectively in the commercial food sector than within public institutions. The issue is not simply whether a hospital kitchen should be punished like a restaurant. It is whether the same basic safety principles are being measured and enforced through a system appropriate to a healthcare setting.
The movement of food trolleys provides another institutional challenge. At RG Kar, the report said that trolleys travelled through wards before returning directly to the kitchen. This makes the boundary between patient areas and food-preparation areas operationally important. Even without establishing a specific contamination event, the arrangement shows why hospitals need clearly defined circulation routes, cleaning procedures and separation protocols for equipment used to distribute meals.
Construction near a kitchen creates a similar coordination problem. Cement and sand dust in a narrow passage may be treated as a temporary inconvenience by a works department, but near food preparation it becomes part of the kitchen’s hygiene environment. This means hospital infrastructure upgrades cannot be managed separately from food-service operations. Work zones, dust control, material storage and access routes have to be planned around the continued preparation of patient meals.
The available evidence does not establish that any patient fell ill because of the conditions described, nor does it provide laboratory results proving contamination at the kitchens. It does, however, document visible deficiencies and an apparent gap between claims of inspection and the health department records cited in the report. The absence of a recorded inspection is not proof that no inspection occurred, but it does show why transparent documentation is necessary.
RG Kar’s medical superintendent and vice-principal, Saptarshi Chattopadhyay, said the hospital was taking kitchen cleanliness seriously and had received necessary instructions from the health department. He added that the hospital was following those instructions, while acknowledging that changing long-standing practices would take time. The next question is therefore not only whether instructions have been issued, but how compliance will be measured and when deficiencies will be closed.
The comparison with the municipal corporation’s 15-day correction period for private food businesses makes the accountability question concrete. Government hospitals need an equivalent, documented process: inspection, written deficiencies, responsible officials, a correction deadline and a follow-up report. The supplied report does not establish whether such a uniform process exists across Kolkata’s government hospitals.
The evidence confirms a mismatch between the importance of hospital food and the visibility of the systems that govern its preparation. Kolkata’s enforcement drive has shown that hygiene standards can be applied to food businesses. Conditions at RG Kar and NRS now place the focus on whether public hospitals are subject to equally consistent scrutiny, whether increased meal allocations are matched by kitchen infrastructure and whether inspection records can demonstrate improvement. The outstanding sample report at Calcutta National Medical College and the promised administrative response at RG Kar are the next developments to watch.
