More Beds in Hospitals Within Few Months

Normally, I listen to radio on my long journeys from Bandra to Belapur and that is quite entertaining. In between music and song they give information about Mumbai interspersed by many silly conversations. Yesterday, I heard them talking about Mumbai hospitals getting a make-over and there will be more beds to accommodate many more patient. This person was talking about Mumbai having too many beds and not having enough patients to occupy them. He went on to say that the hospital staff will start behaving like some credit-card companies, calling up people and inviting them to admit themselves in their hospital, offering them their USP of unique advantages and discounts upon admittance. I found the standees in the bus staring at me when I laughed out aloud at his silly joke. Those guys at radio station are quite entertaining, but jokes aside, this is indeed very good news.

Within the span of a few months, the number of hospital beds in the city will soar by a heartwarming 10%, statistics show. And not all of this will be restricted to the expensive private hospitals—much of the makeover is taking place in the ‘affordable’ public sector.

Surveys peg the total number of hospital beds in the city at 40,000. With the BMC’s plan to add 1,477 beds to its suburban hospitals and two private groups —Reliance’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Seven Hills Hospital— scheduled to add over 2,000 beds in the coming months, the hospital sector is growing at a fast clip.

Welcoming improvements in public health facilities, health activist Ravi Duggal, however, had a word of caution: "A lot of construction also means a lot of corruption. There should be a public audit mechanism to monitor the functioning of these hospitals, such as availability of staffers and essential drugs.''

The public health sector will cater to another pressing need-that of intensive care unit beds. Critical care in public hospitals often comes under tremendous pressure, given that most accident victims are first rushed there. Besides, complicated patients from other hospitals are also transferred there. "The existing ventilators are often juggled between patients,'' said a doctor.

I hope the public hospitals will be as clean as private hospitals and the staff equally efficient. It is no use adding more beds in the hospital if they are not clean enough to sanitize the diseases.

Cough! Cough!

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/