Wanted: More hospital beds
December 3, 2006
Girish Rathod (name changed) coughs and shivers on the cold winter floor of Bandra’s Bhabha Hospital.
Down with viral fever, he lies sprawled at the floor waiting for his turn – to get a hospital bed. Girish is not alone. According to figures given in a recent study conducted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) public health department on the available resources at city civic hospitals, the average bed to population ratio for Mumbai is 1: 1,462. In other words, there is one bed for 1,462 citizens at the 19 BMC hospitals (3 major hospitals and 16 peripheral ones). According to global standards, the ratio should be 1: 250 ( see box). The skewed ratio is despite taxpayers contributing Rs850 crore towards civic health care. Municipal hospitals have a collective bed capacity of 8,210 for a population of 1.2 crore.
The survey also points out that despite attending to 72 per cent (86.40 lakh) of the city’s population, the BMC has made a budgetary provision of Rs92.56 crore for 16 peripheral secondary care hospitals – only 19.4 per cent of the total civic health budget. In contrast, the three city-based major hospitals – King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Parel, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion and BYL Nair Hospital at Mumbai Central- which cater to 28 per cent of population, have been allotted Rs144.56 crore. Sometimes, the neglect is clear. The Intensive Coronary Care Unit at Vile Parle’s Cooper Hospital is almost non-functional due a dearth of staff. Even the hospital building demands repairs. Borivli’s Bhagwati hospital, which caters to a vast population in the western suburbs, does not have a criticare facility. It does not even house basic diagnostic scanning devices like MRI and CT scans. The Shattabdi hospital at Govandi is barely functioning.
Dr Seema Mallik, chief medical superintendent, peripheral hospitals, said: “With more patients flocking to suburban hospitals, there is an urgent need to upgrade their facilities.” Civic sources suggest that the hospitals need life saving medical facilities like criticare units and neuro surgery units, and high-end diagnostic facilities like sonography, echocardiography and dialysis unit. “We are doing the best we can with the available facilities and inventory. Trauma wards are being set up at three hospitals, Rajawadi, SVD Sawarkar and Bhagwati. Siddharth Hospital at Goregaon will soon have a full-fledged orthopaedic unit. New outpatient complexes are also planned for Bhabha, VN Desai and Rajawadi hospitals.