Mumbai region: Covid-19 exposes satellite cities' poor health set-ups

TNN | Updated: Apr 4, 2020, 10:11 IST

SVD Savarkar Hospital in Mulund (east) now has 30 isolation beds

Less than 50km from the BMC headquarters near CSMT, Covid-19 infection has exposed inadequate healthcare facilities in the satellite cities. Be it Vashi, Thane, Kalyan or Mira-Bhayander, patients have had to trudge to Kasturba Hospital, near Chinckpokli, for a free Covid-19 test.
In fact, BMC officials said a third of the patients who rush to BMC's hospitals for Covid tests and are placed under quarantine and isolation facilities, hail from its adjoining suburbs/corporations. BMC's healthcare infrastructure is stretched further as a result, said BMC health officials.
Plans for quarantine and isolation beds are only now being firmed up. Consider the Mira-Bhayander stretch, which has six positive cases three of them are at Kasturba, two at Kokilaben (Andheri) and one at Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (Tembha) civic hospital in Bhayander. In Palghar district, of the 11 cases, seven are at Kasturba, two at private hospitals in Vasai-Virar region and one at Palghar primary health centre.
After discussions in Kalyan, urban development minister Eknath Shinde said, "It has been decided that to avoid sending patients to Mumbai for testing and treatment in coming days, doctors in Kalyan will collect swabs of patients and send them to Kasturba for testing.'' Further treatment will be done at isolation wards in Kalyan-Dombivli, he said.
The only government facility for testing in satellite cities is one newly set up at Thane civil hospital. Private testing facilities are only available in certain sections of Navi Mumbai and Thane. People in Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayander belt and Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation limits or Palghar have to depend on Kasturba hospital for swab tests.
KDMC has tied up with Neon multispecialty hospital, a private hospital in Dombivli (East), for a 40-bedded isolation facility.
Thembha hospital will reopen next week as a Covid-19-only hospital. Private hospitals such as Bhakti Vedanta and Wockhardt in Mira Road have isolation wards.
KDMC, which has 21 positive patients in Kalyan-Dombivli stretch, has decided to prepare 500 isolation beds across five hospitals. PCMC has reserved a sub-district hospital in Panvel for Covid-19 treatment.
(With inputs from Sandhya Nair, Pradeep Gupta, George Mendonca & Umesh K Parida)