Saurashtra patients prefer natives to A’bad hospitals

Rajkot: Not being able to get a bed in any hospital in Ahmedabad for his 61-year-old father Pravin Bhat, Nirav, a resident of Naroda area in Ahmedabad, brought him to the family’s native city Rajkot for treatment on June 10. “My father developed symptoms and we advised to get his tests done. I tried to everywhere possible in Ahmedabad but couldn’t find my father a vacant bed. As my father’s native is Rajkot, we were advised to move to Rajkot. He is responding well to the treatment now,” said Nirav.
Like the Bhatts, several families having roots in Saurashtra but are settled in Ahmedabad for years, are now preferring to get Covid-19 diagnosis and treatment in their native towns and cities. After unlock 1.0, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Jamnagar and other smaller towns have witnessed natives straight driving into the respective civil hospitals there.
The reverse trend is being attributed to the deteriorating Covid-19 situation in Ahmedabad, unavailability of beds for hospitalization and complaints about mismanagement in the civil hospital, doctors and patients’ relatives whom TOI spoke with said.
The civil hospitals in these three cities have comparatively better medical facility and at least 22 patients have come from Ahmedabad since June 1 to get their Covid tests done.
Jamnagar collector Ravi Shankar told TOI: “Recently, a patient drove in to the Covid OPD in GG Hospital from Ahmedabad and tested positive. As the line of treatment is the same, it doesn’t matter whether you are getting treated in Ahmedabad, Surat or in Jamnagar.”
Administrator of Sir T hospital in Bhavnagar, Hardik Gathani said, “There are people who are residents of Ahmedabad but native of Bhavnagar who feel that they will get good facility in our Covid hospitals.”
Dr Manish Bhanderi, district medical officer, Rajkot said, “We are getting cases where relatives in Rajkot have asked their kin from Ahmedabad to get treatment at Rajkot if they have symptoms or tested Covid positive, thinking that the facility here is better.”
Echoing Bhanderi, the municipal health officer of Rajkot, Dr Pankaj Rathod said, “After speaking with the patients from Ahmedabad, we got a feeling that they had panicked thinking they won’t get good treatment there. We also have two patients who recently got admitted in Rajkot but don’t have any relatives here. They had come specifically to our Covid facility created in the private hospital and after testing positive.”