Taking stock of hardships

With the ground situation in most of the State run hospitals not showing any signs of improvement, post demonetisation, city-based NGO, Helping Hand Foundation (HHF) filed an RTI with the Director of Medical Education on Thursday.

In the query Mujtaba Hasan Askari, President and Trustee of HHF has sought a report from the DME, as to what measures and efforts the Director and all the managements of State-Run hospitals; OGH, Gandhi Hospital, Niloufer Hospital, Govt ENT, Govt Maternity etc, have taken to address the plight of patients and their attenders.

“Even after the Health Minister Dr C Laxma Reddy’s directions to all State hospitals to offer cashless service to the poor, patient woes continue to increase.

This is based on a quick survey done at OGH on Thursday,” said Askari. “It came to light that most of the ward boys, ayahs and other support staff demand Rs 50 to Rs 100 for every service they provide to these patients,” he added.

Arranging food for poor
A few social groups and civil society organisations are now arranging for food in light of the problems being faced by patients and their attenders.

In this regard, the ISCON Group, Hare Krishna’s Bhojan mitra are not only providing all three meals at OGH but also at Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital and Gandhi Hospital.

Elsewhere HHF has initiated a month-long food programme for patient attenders at MNJ Cancer Hospital. According to Askari, “MNJ Cancer Hospital does not have an in-house canteen and the hospital supplies food to the inpatients only.”

“Given this situation and the fact that MNJ Cancer Hospital is a regional centre where a lot of patients come from other States and districts and have no local support, HHF has decided to provide coupons of breakfast and one meal (Thali) in a day to at least 100 attenders,” said Askari.

“The canteen has accepted to take cheque payments from us and we intend to run this until the cash situation eases out a bit. We will also ramp up the coupon distribution if the need arises,” he said.