No beds, patients get ‘floor treatment’
Even as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has allotted nearly Rs 2,700 crore funds for improving the condition of its hospitals. The majority of the civic-run hospitals have failed to even provide beds to its patients. They are given a separate bed sheet to cover the floor and made to sleep on it while undergoing treatment.
Shockingly, the city’s leading public hospitals are treating their patients in a shoddy manner. When Free Press Journal visited civic-run hospitals like King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital, BYL Nair Hospital and Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, it found that sevral patients were sleeping on the floor.
The doctors treating these patients cite the shortage of infrastructure to accommodate these ‘extra’ patients. “During monsoons, civic-run hospitals face more than 100 per cent occupancy and bed shortage with patients getting admitted for fever and water-borne diseases,” said a senior doctor.
“We only 1350 beds and get 1700 patients and we are unable to accommodate all the patients. Moreover, when they come for treatment we cannot refuse them to get admitted,” said Dr Avinash Supe, Dean of KEM.
Each ward at the hospitals have more than 35 beds, but still, patients have to sit on the floor. “We get more patients as compared to the beds provided in each ward due to which they have to be treated on the floor. But when the bed is vacant, it is been allotted to the patient who is sleeping on the floor,” said a Dr Ramesh Bharmal, Dean of Nair hospital. More than ten patients were seen getting treated on the floors in the surgical ward of Nair hospital. “It is difficult for us to sleep on the floor as we are scared of getting hurt by other patients who keep walking at night,” said one of the patients.