Nagpur: Looking at the state-of-the-art civic-owned healthcare facilities gathering dust, 12 doctors and 15 staff nurses have offered to run any of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) hospitals which is unable to take in Covid patients due to lack of manpower.
The initiative has been taken through NGO TogetherWeCan and Samta Sainik Dal (Samta Arogya Pratishthan), which have been assisting helpless citizens during Covid times. The group has asked the NMC to bear the expenses and provide them all the infrastructure required for the hospital.
Another group of doctors met the NMC brass with a similar proposal but they proposed to charge patients. Municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B told TOI that he told them that they can work at the Pachpaoli Covid Care Centre (CCC) having oxygenated beds but they can’t charge patients. “We are ready to pay salaries as per NUHM but we can’t allow them to charge citizens. They told us they would charge nominal fee, but it can’t be allowed,” he said.
Regarding TogetherWeCan’s proposal, the civic body is yet to decide. The healthcare workers and the two NGOs said they had approached the divisional commissioner who advised them to coordinate with the municipal commissioner.
TogetherWeCan’s Joseph George said four Ayurveda medical officers, as many medical college doctors and MD doctors beside 14 staff nurses were ready to work. “They have experience in Covid duties. We are ready to take over any time even at a short notice. Our only condition is that NMC will provide salary and infrastructure,” he said.
The NGO said NMC’s Isolation Hospital was lying defunct. “We can run a 30-bed Covid hospital there,” he said.
Following outbreak of Covid, NMC had revamped its hospitals - IGR at Gandhi Nagar, Isolation at Imambada, NMC Women's Hospital at Pachpaoli and KT Nagar Ayush and Sadar Ayush Hospitals. However, citizens couldn't benefit from them as NMC failed to run them due to lack of staff.
Meanwhile, NMC has also approached a couple of private hospitals asking them if they can run Covid facilities at certain smaller hospitals that are yet to be converted into Covid hospitals. Some hospitals have declined the proposal as they are facing staff shortage for their own admitted patients.
Additional municipal commissioner Jalaj Sharma said they were pursuing hospitals to check if they can run step down facilities at other hospitals. “Not all hospitals may have the infrastructure for a DCH so they can be CCC or DCHC,” he said.