Mumbai: In Lodhivali village, about 55 km from Mumbai, a people’s movement is slowly building up to keep the 19 year old Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (DAH) running. Thinning staff, lack of adequate medical equipment, and cases of emergency patients being shifted to other hospitals have led to apprehensions that the hospital is on its way to closure.
Allegations of “internal corruption sabotaging the hospital” by Dr. Sanjay Thakur, a former medical director who turned whistle-blower, added to the scare. Now, seven gram panchayats, local villagers and politicians are rallying to ensure that the hospital stays alive.
Reliance Industries founder Dhirubhai Ambani started this 82-bed facility on October 1, 1998, to cater to accident victims on the Mumbai-Pune highway. Besides the 400-odd villages in its 30-km radius, the hospital also caters to the staff of Patalganga Manufacturing Division, the first plant set up by Reliance Industries, and residents of Reliance Lodhivali Township, which also has two big schools.
Inadequate equipment
“It was the best healthcare facility in the area. But in the past few years, it has been systemically sabotaged and neglected by the Reliance Hospital Management Services Pvt Ltd (RHMSPL), the company floated by Reliance Industries to run the hospital,” said Dr. Thakur, who was a full-time physician at the facility when it started in 1998.
Dr. Thakur (at Left), who was an ex employee of Dhiru Bhai Ambani Hospital at Lodhivali in Raigad district of Maharashtra, explaining how the closure news of the Reliance run hospital has shattered the medicare hope of the surrounding villagers. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury
After working in Australia for a few years, he returned to DAH as medical director in January 2015. During his second stint, when Dr. Thakur began auditing the staff strength, medical equipment and other functionalities, the hurdles became apparent.
He alleges that the hospital had merely two cradles, while nearly 80 babies were delivered in a month; the only foetal non-stress test machine, which helps detect heart rate and movement of the foetus, was non-functional; an old CT scan machine needed repairs; and the hospital was still using an 18 year old ultrasound machine, which often gave misleading reports.
“A teacher who underwent a sonography was told both her ovaries were normal. It turned out that she had had one of her ovaries removed,” said Dr. Thakur, who soon realised that all his requests for repairs and new equipment were being ignored by RHMSPL.
After much deliberation, in January this year, Dr. Thakur finally approached the ethics committee as a whistle-blower to highlight how the hospital, working on Reliance Industries’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds, was bleeding financially. In addition to the delays in repairs and purchases, he also pointed out the escalated pathology bills.
While nothing changed at the hospital, on June 14, Dr. Thakur was given a transfer to Dahej in Gujarat and, soon after, terminated when he did not report for duty.
In 2014, the group pumped in crores of rupees to rebuild the Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in Girgaum. In April this year, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani donated medical equipment worth ₹90 lakh to a hospital run by the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust in Shirdi.
Dr. Thakur said, “There is no reason why he would turn a blind eye towards DAH, which was very close to his father’s heart. In his inaugural speech, Dhirubhai Ambani had told the doctors that if they save one life, he would feel he had earned ₹2 lakh.” Dr. Thakur believes his communications are being blocked at the secretarial level and prevented from reaching Mukesh or Nita Ambani.
Patients in the lurch
On July 30, Shailesh Kadam, a constable from from Karjat police station, and his wife, Shriya, were on their way to Panvel when their motorcycle skidded off the road. While Mr. Kadam suffered a head injury, Mrs. Kadam fractured her right leg. The locals took them to DAH, where a doctor stitched up Mr. Kadam’s wound and gave painkillers to his wife.
“We were asked to go to another hospital as there was no orthopaedic doctor,” said Mr. Kadam, who had to call for an ambulance and take his wife to MGM Hospital in Panvel, where she was operated on.
Two months ago, Arun Mukadam from Chowk village was rushed to DAH with chest pain. An ECG revealed that the 55-year-old had had a severe heart attack. “They simply asked me to go to another hospital,” said Mr. Mukadam, who was not even given any medication to dissolve clots.
“We went to Lifeline hospital in Panvel, where they gave me an injection worth ₹35,000, and I later underwent an angioplasty at the D.Y. Patil Hospital,” said Mr. Mukadam.
Recounting the recent death of a villager on the way to Panvel due to a heart attack, he said, “We need this hospital to be better equipped.”
Abhijit More, co-convener of Jan Arogya Abhiyan, said that in the past, the hospital has been of great help for many patients in emergency. “But now, there is hardly anything being done there. We can’t force a private group to keep the hospital running, but the government should wake up to the need and start a trauma care facility of that level in the location.”
Dr. More has started a signature campaign petitioning the Chief Minister to take over DAH and start a trauma care and ICU facility there.
Doctors from DAH had once stabilised the late Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackrey, when he developed chest pain while he was in his Karjat farmhouse. A senior neurosurgeon was given drugs for thrombolysis a few years ago after he had a massive attack.
Other facilities — such as the Chowk Rural Hospital about 6 km away, Khopoli Municipal Hospital about 20-25 km away and Karjat Sub District Hospital about 15-17 km away — remain ill-equipped and understaffed.
No decision on closure
A Reliance Industries Limited spokesperson told The Hindu that no formal decision has been taken on the closure of the hospital. “The hospital’s occupancy has fallen below 20% for the last couple of years, resulting in losses. There are approximately 4,000 patients registered at the HIV/AIDS Centre and the average daily OPD attendance is 55. However, the Reliance management has been financially supporting operations,” the spokesperson said.
The hospital used to have two full-time physicians, two orthopaedic doctors, two surgeons and two anaesthetists, and six emergency medical officers. Now, however, it has just one physician, paediatrician and gynaecologist, and three emergency medical officers.
It also has a severe shortfall of nurses, and no matron. Other doctors are visiting specialists.
But the Reliance spokesperson said that the hospital is staffed adequately, and the facility is equipped with an ICU, operation theatres and other investigation facilities to deal with secondary medical care.
