For the
past week, there has been an acute shortage of medical supplies, including
dressing gauze and cotton material at the hospitals. These government
hospitals, meant to serve the poor, have been hit with increased the fees of
between 200 and 500 percent, making treatment for the poor more expensive than
that in the private hospitals.
Poor
patients are being told to purchase gauze, cotton, injections, ointments and
drugs.
Doctors told
reporters in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur that they sympathize with the conditions
of the patients and said that even a small packet of gauze costs as much as 200
rupees. They blamed Gavit and other senior health officials.
An officiating
dean of a government medical college, speaking to Arab News said: “We have no
budget to buy medicine, gauze and cotton for dressing wounds and the government
is not willing to offer any funds for buying these supplies," he said.
"We are helpless. My doctors and residents are so sympathetic toward the
patients they pool money from their own pockets to purchase the supplies for poor
patients.”
Despite
several attempts by Arab News to contact Gavit, he remained elusive.
Arab News
and several other journalists also tried to reach NCP supremo and federal
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to come to the rescue of the poor people
suffering due to the acts of his party minister and the Congress-NCP led
government, but even Pawar was too bogged down in party internal affairs in
Mumbai to comment.
