Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party once again urged Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to include COVID-19 treatment in the State government’s ‘Aarogyasri’ health insurance scheme or allow the Centre’s health insurance scheme of ‘Ayushman Bharati’ to be utilised for citizens in private hospitals.
Former party president K. Laxman, in a digital conference with the media, castigated the TRS government for “not preparing adequately to shore up public health facilities, testing capacities and recruitment of key medical/paramedical staff during the lockdown period leading to alarming rise of COVID-19 positive cases”.
“The intensive care facilities and staff are insufficient at Gandhi Hospital to handle the increasing number of patients and in fact, people are scared of getting themselves admitted there. The government should immediately throw open the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS) in Gachibowli and allow isolation plus treatment facilities to be opened in the districts so that the pressure on Gandhi Hospital is lessened,” he said. The BJP leader criticised the lack of coordination among various departments leading to several hours of delay in testing, announcing of results, identifying isolation or health centres to which a ‘positive’ tested patient needs to be sent and very process of admission.
“We have been hearing many instances of delay in testing, tracing, declaring and identifying of health facility and treatment causing much anguish to anxious families,” he claimed and wanted to know how the government proposed to tackle the issue of private hospitals refusing to adhere to the official rate card of treatment and declaring full already.
He accused the Chief Minister of being ‘anti-democratic’ in not consulting any Opposition party in containing the pandemic in sharp contrast to Prime Minister Modi holding periodic discussions with Chief Ministers. “TRS leaders and ministers are resorting to political attacks if we point out discrepancies in the pandemic management. Our bid to hold peaceful protest is being thwarted with arrests. Since we are unable to meet the CM, I am writing an open letter to him,” he said.
Mr. Laxman pointed out that he had already requested the Central government to intervene as it had done in Delhi considering that the ‘COVID-19 positive rate has increased from 3.9% in April to 27.5% now with 8,674 cases’. “People have lost confidence in this government’s ability to tackle the pandemic,” he observed and questioned why SCR is not being permitted to treat its own employees who had tested positive.
