The Delhi High Court on Monday directed the Delhi Government to reserve at least one bed in each of its hospitals for conducting dialysis.
Justice S. Muralidhar passed the direction on a petition by a HIV patient who had alleged that he was finding it very difficult to get dialysis conducted on him as per the doctor’s advice due to heavy rush of patients requiring regular dialysis at government hospitals in the Capital.
Earlier, the Delhi Government in its affidavit informed the Court that as of now it could reserve only one bed each at Loknayak Jaiprakash Narayan Hospital and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital.
However, the Court rejected the proposal and directed the Government to reserve one bed at each of its hospitals where dialysis facility was available.
While issuing the direction, the Court also cited an affidavit filed by the Centre in which it was said that the Union Government in consultation with the city Government had decided to provide dialysis facility at all government hospitals in the Capital.
The Court also said that keeping in view the large number of patients who are in the queue requiring regular dialysis, the number of beds the Delhi Government wanted to reserve would be far short.
``The scale of the problem faced by the HIV patients in obtaining maintenance dialysis in government hospitals is such that this Court is of the view that it is inadequate to reserve just one bed each in the two hospitals of the Delhi Government,’’ the Bench said.
``In a time-bound manner, at least one bed must be reserved in each of the other hospitals functioning under
the Delhi Government where dialysis facility is available’’, the Court further said.
The Court asked the Delhi Government to file an affidavit within eight weeks mentioning a time frame in which its direction would be implemented.
