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It's time Bombay Municipal Corporation found a cure for ailing hospitals

Mumbai - Unhygienic wards and rooms, operation theatres and emergency rooms with dysfunctional equipment, piles of garbage lying within the hospital premises, unsafe practices and kitchens serving food cooked in shocking conditions.these are routine at almost all the BMC owned hospitals.

Though the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) spends hundreds of millions of rupees on more than a score of hospitals, conditions at these facilities are appalling.
Unhygienic wards and rooms, operation theatres and emergency rooms with dysfunctional equipment, piles of garbage lying within the hospital premises, unsafe practices and kitchens serving food cooked in shocking conditions.these are routine at almost all the BMC owned hospitals.
Janhit Manch, an NGO that aims to ensure good governance, recently did a survey of three civic hospitals in Mumbai and found the conditions pitiable. All three hospitals - V.N. Desai at Santacruz, Diwaliben Mehta at Chembur and Savarkar at Mulund - cater to the needs of hundreds of thousands of poor people living in these suburbs.
According to Utsal Karnani, vice-president Janhit Manch, the emergency room facilities at these hospitals are almost non-existent or rudimentary. "We were shocked to see the pitiable conditions prevailing at these hospitals, including unhygienic conditions in the hospital premises, deplorable conditions of the  bathrooms and toilets, lack of clothing for patients and unclean linen," he points out. "The walls present a pathetic sight with peeled paints, and broken plaster."
Many of the ICCUs and cardiac operation theatres are dysfunctional and sophisticated machines - for which tax-payers money have been used - such as for sonography, CT scans and X-rays - are not available for patients.
Facilities such as neo-natal intensive care, dialysis, spirometry/lung function equipment, and a host of other centres in the hospitals are not accessible as the machines are not functioning.
Worse, fire-fighting equipment are inoperative and safety norms violated blatantly.
At the 281-bed V.N. Desai hospital at Santacruz, the canteen is littered with hospital trash, the food articles are kept on the floor or in unhygienic gunny bags. An open drain flows next to the kitchen.
Patients and their relatives squat on the floor and even hawkers do roaring business, selling linen, plastic and glass bottles and a host of things that are not provided by the hospital.
Karnani has written to Ajoy Mehta, the municipal commissioner, providing images of the appalling conditions at the hospitals, and asking him to ensure that things are set right.
Surprisingly, while the Mumbai city development plan - 2005 to 2025 - suggested that the government should encourage public-private partnerships in hospitals and also called for the handing over of some hospitals to reputed trusts and NGOs, the BMC has started cancelling such PPP initiatives and taking back hospitals and nursing homes from the voluntary bodies.
nithin@khaleejtimes.com

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