The Hindu : Their misery knows no ends

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 09, 2003

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Other States - New Delhi

Their misery knows no ends

By Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI MAY 8. After one and a half years of being Bed No.21, this young man in his early 30s died last month at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here unwanted and unmourned. Sadly he is not the only one to die or even live as a destitute patient.

Laying on Bed 20 at the Neuro Sciences Centre in AIIMS is another patient, a woman, who was brought in with a head injury early this year and is now ready for discharge. Only she has nowhere to go. Besides, she doesn't remember her name or address. What remains of patients like her and Bed No. 21 is just an entry in the big brown dusty hospital register titled "Destitute Patients''. They are people whom you call "nobody's people''.

According to the Medical Social Service Officer (MSSO) of the Neuro Sciences Centre, the hospital receives as many as 100 destitute patients each year brought in by the Police Control Room vans or CAT ambulances, or even left outside the casualty by relatives who cannot afford the patients treatment. This year they have already had 45 destitute patients at the centre.

``What we have here is clearly a problem of plenty and while we cannot turn away patients the hospital takes them in and provides them treatment. After they get better we request the two Mother Teresa homes to take them in. But with the two homes filling up there is no vacancy for these patients and as they don't remember their names or address there is no way we can send them away,'' says Meenu Marwaha, in charge MSSO (Neuro Sciences).

And what possibly could have been a solution to the problem is a half-way home -- proposal for which has been pending with at the AIIMS office for nearly a decade.

Speaking about the many failed attempts to provide these patients a respectable living and death after being left in the hospital as destitute, Dr. Meenu says: "A proposal was submitted some seven years ago to the AIIMS office and after much pursuing the DDA did give sanction for a half-way home at Trilokpuri which is an existing facility of AIIMS, but the office refuses to give the green signal to the project or even let us use the land it has at Ghaziabad.''

She adds: "Without adequate nursing most of these destitute patients develop stiff limbs, critical bed sores and suffer from the absence of a healing touch in their treatment. We believe that these patients can get better if a `human touch' is provided to them and that of course is missing.''

But it is not just the destitute patients who suffer in the hospital, it is also the "problem of occupancy'' that is worrying the doctors.

``If rejected by Mother Teresa Home or by Sewa (another institute that the doctors at AIIMS are trying to talk to) the patients remain with us and occupy beds which causes problem for the "moving patients'' who await beds for surgery. And while we have long requested various non-government organisations and other help groups to assist us, they clearly seem to be people nobody wants to take responsibility for,'' says Dr. Marwaha.

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