As Pune enters 2016, riding hopes of donning a new avatar, Newsline takes stock of areas in the city that remained more or less ‘unsmart’ in 2015.
AS LOW AS 10 per cent of Pune city population avails treatment at civic hospitals. With hospital care and medical treatment becoming expensive, especially for diseases like cancer and diabetes, the civic health department needs to take smarter steps to provide specialised, prompt, quality healthcare at affordable rates.
While Sassoon general hospital is an 1,800 bed government-run facility, majority of the patients are from outside Pune and across the state.
For economically-challenged patients, cheaper healthcare can be availed from civic hospitals, which are currently very few and understaffed.
With just 16 civic hospitals and 47 dispensaries for a 31 lakh population in Pune city, civic authorities have been struggling to fill permanent posts of specialised doctors.
Several advertisements issued this year have found few takers, leading to post graduate medical students being directed by the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) to treat the patients.
There are 610 small and large private hospitals, and approximately 6,000 dispensaries, but with 42 per cent of Pune’s population living in slums, as per the Environment Status Report of PMC, quality medical care remains out of bounds for many.
Admitting the shortcomings, Dr ST Pardeshi, acting chief medical officer, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), says that authorities have provided basic infrastructure. They have provided glucometers and some basic equipment to check hypertension at the civic dispensaries, when hospitals and dispensaries should be equipped with a lot more facilities, says Pardeshi.
Time to strengthen reporting of dengue, swine flu, TB
Dengue and swine flu (H1N1 virus) are endemic to the city and while statistics show that that the number of suspected cases registered with the PMC in 2015 were not as alarming as last year, civic hospitals are yet to gear up to meet the challenge. As against over 3,000 suspected dengue cases last year, a total of 1,239 were registered by the PMC this year. A total of 1,239 suspected cases of swine flu were also registered from January till December this year. Out of 152 deaths registered at Pune hospitals due to swine flu, 69 were from the city according to the state health officials. Pardeshi said that just like TB has become a notifiable disease, dispensaries will be urged to register dengue cases online.
HIV prevention cut short due to fund paucity
HIV prevention programmes suffered in 2015 due to fund shortage from the National AIDS Control Organisation. For more than eight months, 300 people working towards preventing HIV were not paid salaries. Several NGOs walked out of the targeted intervention project and others are availing bank loans to run the programmes. With new goals being set up to end the disease by 2030, access to prevention, care and treatment is vital.
Online birth and death certificates on the cards
“As part of the move to make Pune smart, we are planning to issue online birth and death certificates so that citizens can avail it at home. Licenses for registration of nursing homes will also be done online,” Pardeshi assured. He admitted that physical verification is required for these important documents but to make Pune smart, focus will be now on e-governance to ensure comfort for citizens.
Source: http://indianexpress.com/
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