INDIA HAS POSITIONED itself as a medical tourism hotspot, yet we struggle to provide for our sick-as revealed by the death of two children from dengue in our nation's capital after allegedly being turned away by hospitals running short of beds. Now a 2013 Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) report reveals this: India had, on average, only 1.1 government hospital beds for every 1000 people. This compares abysmally with data from the World Bank for other countries with large populations: Russia (9.7), China (3.8), the US (2.9) and Brazil (2.3).
What is frightening is that, according to the MoHFW, Delhi state (1.3 per 1000) is above the national average. Maharashtra (0.4), Madhya Pradesh (0.4), Assam (0.3) and Bihar (0.1) lag far behind. Delhi's government hospitals are bursting at the seams, with two or three patients having to share a bed. Private hospitals have been turning away the economically disadvantaged, delaying treatment or inflating bills. This, despite the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court orders that hospitals allotted government land at concessional rates should reserve 25% of all outpatient treatment and 10% of inpatient facilities for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) free of charge.
"We have got complaints that hospitals are turning away critical patients citing lack of beds," Satyendra Jain, the Delhi Health Minister told firstpost.com, following the upsurge in dengue cases in the capital this September. "They want to take cases that can be managed easily. In the ICUs, beds are hardly available for EWS patients."
The solution: investing heavily in public hospitals and making it mandatory for private hospitals to admit any patient, whether or not they can afford it.
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