The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Plan to shift three CGHS hospitals in city

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Thursday, Jul 17, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Plan to shift three CGHS hospitals in city

HYDERABAD: Pensioners, freedom fighters and elderly women, who form a large chunk of Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) beneficiaries, will now have to travel double the distance, in some cases even more, for doctor’s consultation and collection of drugs.

The CGHS officials have come up with a plan to shift three CGHS clinics from existing locations to far-off places. Accordingly, the CGHS clinic at Kakatiyanagar in Langer Houz would be shifted to Gachibowli and the dispensary at Humayun Nagar near Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital would be shifted to Road No. 12, Banjara Hills. The Dilsukhnagar clinic would be merged with the existing Malakpet clinic.

This is not all. The round-the-clock CGHS clinic at Himayatnagar has been shut down on the pretext of doctors’ shortage. Till recently, there were three 24-hour CGHS dispensaries at Begumpet, Himayatnagar and Malakpet. The Malakpet dispensary was shut down long back, on the same grounds.

With this, CGHS beneficiaries have only one 24-hour clinic in the city. “Corporate hospitals avoid admitting patients with minor emergencies because of shortage of beds. For such patients, the 24-hour CGHS clinics were the only hope,” points out General Secretary for Coordination Committee of Central Government Pensioners’ Association G.S. Vittal.

Several CGHS patients informed that they were not consulted before the decision to shift. “It is hard to imagine old people in and around Lunger Houz travelling till Gachibowli for consultation. This is unreasonable,” says M. Laxmi Narayan, General Secretary of All Pensioners and Retired Persons Association.

The CGHS authorities maintained that Himayatnagar clinic was closed down due to staff crunch. Officials informed that new facilities at Gachibowli and Banajra Hills will be owned by the department, which was not the case earlier. Presently, the city has 16 CGHS clinics which need 76 doctors. However, there are only 60 doctors out of which a few are on the verge of retirement. “We have asked higher-ups to transfer surplus posts, which are in good numbers in Chennai and Bangalore,” says CGHS Additional Director Pramila Tripathi.

The CGHS Hyderabad has about 17,000 pensioners’ cards, 6,000 freedom fighters cards and 50,000 cards of regular employees.

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