Operating on full capacity, the dialysis centre located in the Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya hospital (Coronation Hospital) is refusing to serve new patients. Working on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode, the centre provides the facility of free dialysis to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) patients and the card holders of Atal Ayushman Uttarakhand Yojana (AAUY).
In absence of this vital facility, the poor patients are left with option of either getting the life saving dialysis done at some private centre on astronomical rates or wait for a slow death. Repeated requests of the centre to the health department for providing more dialysis machines in view of ever increasing load appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
The centre at present has 17 dialysis machines which are working on full capacity. A person suffering from kidney ailment is usually advised to undergo dialysis twice a week. A normal process of dialysis usually takes four hours. The centre is doing 45 dialyses in one day on 17 machines and the figure crosses 1200 patients in a month. When contacted by The Pioneer, the consultant at the centre, Dr V C Vohra accepted that the centre is refusing new patients. “Yes we are refusing to serve new patients. On an average four to five such patients visit us but since we have all the slots of dialysis occupied, we have no option but to refuse them,’’ he said.
It is learnt that the centre is requesting the health department to provide ten new machines to it from quite some time now but the department is paying no heed. A dialysis machine is available at about Rs 7 lakh in the market. In absence of capacity enhancement of the centre, the patients are forced to visit private centres which charge anything between Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000 for one dialysis session. It is worth mentioning here that normally a kidney patient is required to undergo eight sessions of dialysis in a month to survive.
Experts feel that in view of ever increasing patients of kidney ailments, the centre which at present is a day care centre should be upgraded to a full-fledged kidney care centre with the Intensive Care Unit ( ICU) and facility to admit the patients.
When asked, the Director General (DG) health services, Dr Ravindra Thapliyal said that if the centre wants more machines then its officials should come and submit the request. He however accepted that the dialysis capacity should be increased for the poor patients.
To provide better nephro care facilities in Uttarakhand, the centre was handed over to Apollo hospitals on August 2010 under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. After the end of contract, the centre is being operated by the NephroPlus Company. The term of the contract is ending next year and exasperated over long delays in payment and other hassles the NephroPlus is said to be unwilling to renew the contract.