BMC's budget for hospitals shows Rs 861 crore increase

Mumbai: While the Brihanm-umbai Municipal Corp-oration (BMC)’s hospital budget of Rs 3,636.82 crore for 2018-19 shows a hike of Rs 861.89 crore from the last budget, its focus will be on ramping up the infrastructure and manpower of tertiary and peripheral hospitals and not the main civic-run hospitals which are mostly housed in dilapidated buildings and attract large crowds from the city and across the state. The revamp of KEM’s infrastructure is still in the pipeline. 

A senior civic health official said, “The tender for hiring a company to look after all hospital machinery at civic hospitals has been floated. The repair work has already started for dilapidated buildings and wards.” The BMC health department also stated that a proposal to set up an equipment committee for looking after the maintenance of equipment and machinery as well plastering of old structures has started. Once these things fall into place, then the move is expected to reduce the waiting period for patients.

Dr Avinash Supe, director of major civic- run hospitals, said, “The reconstruction will at least take a couples of months.” A major hospital, Nair Hospital is without an MRI machine for over two months after it was damaged in an accident. When asked about MRI machines, Dr Supe said, “All such machines will be mapped, following which the repair work for minor breakdowns would be outsourced.” Referring to the Nair Hospital MRI machine case, he said, “We will do the necessary arrangement once we get the nod from our senior authority.”