Mumbai: Hospitals grapple with abandoned patients, few shelters for them

EXPRESS PHOTO BY PRAVEEN KHANNA/Representational

In the King George V Memorial infirmary for destitute patients in Mahalaxmi, Indra Kataria (63) has been a resident for eight years. “I may continue to live here forever,” she said. She was left by her brother at the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion, when she was rendered unable to walk due to weak leg muscles. He never returned.

“I stayed in the hospital and underwent treatment for six months,” she said. When letters to her Ulhasnagar home yielded no response, the hospital shifted her to the infirmary. Like Kataria’s case, government hospitals are grappling with the issue of patient abandonment. With limited number of shelter homes for destitutes, the hospitals are quickly running out of beds. “We cannot accommodate everyone. In a day there are at least two enquiries regarding an abandoned patient needing shelter. We have only 80 beds, and most patients come on permanent basis,” Pranalini Laad, assistant superintendent at the King George infirmary, said.

The shelter home has 60 patients from KEM, Sion and Nair hospitals. “If a patient is bed-ridden, we do not accept them. There is limited manpower. Each patient takes care of himself,” Laad added.

Every year, KEM Hospital refers at least 15-20 patients to shelter homes. According to the hospital’s medical social worker Sangeeta Kasbekar, patients with paraplegia, TB and physical handicaps are those commonly abandoned. “If a patient loses mobility, they prefer to leave them at the hospital,” she said. The hospital waits two months for the family to return. “We send letters to the postal address. When no one comes we obtain a no-objection certificate from police and transfer them to a shelter home.”

Like Kataria, Sadanand Gawde, aged around 62 years, was admitted to KEM Hospital by his brother. Once an alcoholic, he started living with his parents and then brothers after his divorce. After his parents’ death, his brothers slowly severed ties, he said. “I developed an infection in my leg after a fall. My brother admitted me to KEM Hospital,” he said.

In 2011, he underwent an amputation. Records show no one from his family came to discharge him, following which the hospital took help from the local police to shift him to the Mahalaxmi shelter home. Abandonment of female patients is higher too. The city has less than a dozen shelter homes for destitute patients. When a government hospital needs to vacate a hospital bed, social workers are forced to discharge patients and shift them on the streets.

“Most of them land up in beggars’ homes,” said Mohammad Tarique, founder of NGO Koshish that aids the homeless. He said two or three of every 10 in a beggars’ home are not beggers, but patients in need of medical care, abandoned by families. JJ Hospital annually records 25-30 abandoned patients. “A lot of advanced-stage cancer, psychiatric and old patients are deserted. We usually force families to accept their patients through the police,” said medical superintendent Dr Sanjay Surase. “In absence of enough shelter and old-age homes, patients have to be sent to beggar homes.” Government hospitals also face a dearth of medical social workers. In the Group of Tuberculosis Hospital in Sewri, medical superintendent Dr Lalitkumar Anand said the efforts to fill posts for medical social workers are under way for a long time. “Rate of abandonment is highest in TB patients due to social stigma,” he said.

Banwarilal Gupta, 49, had been waiting since 2016 for a villager from his native Odisha to come for him. “I came to Mumbai in search of work with a group of villagers. My family died in the 1999 cyclone,” he said. Gupta met with an accident that led to an infection in his leg in 2016. Kandivali Shatabdi Hospital referred him to Nair Hospital. He claimed that he had informed his friends but no one came to the hospital. Eventually, with a physical handicap and unable to work as a labourer, the hospital shifted him to a shelter home.

He played cards with other abandoned patients, most living there for over a decade. “This is what we do now,” said Sudhir Gopalrege, who had been living here for 15 years.