Urban News

Most surgeons prefer to work in the major hospitals instead of being affiliated to smaller hospitals, civic health officials say. To solve this problem, the civic body is now mulling to make it mandatory for surgeons working at major civic hospitals to also render services at peripheral hospitals on a regular basis. Moreover, the civic body is also looking at roping in private practitioners from the localities to work on a part-time basis in the peripheral hospitals.

While KEM Hospital in Parel, with over 40 departments, performs close to 150-200 minor and major surgeries in a day, the other two major hospitals, BYL Nair Hospital in Byculla and LTMG Hospital in Sion, perform about 80-100 surgeries in a day. As compared to this, the number of surgeries being carried out in peripheral hospitals is rather small. Bhabha Hospital in Bandra, Cooper Hospital in Vile Parle, Rajawadi Hospital in Ghatkopar and Bhagwati hospital in Borivali carry out about 10-12 surgeries in a day. While in the remaining 12 peripheral hospitals, only 4-5 surgeries are performed on an average every day.

Additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar said that even though all peripheral hospitals have an operation theatre, few surgeries are being performed due to unavailability of qualified surgeons. “We have all the required infrastructure in our peripheral hospitals, but due to shortage of surgeons the patients have to travel long distances to get to one of the 3 major hospitals for surgeries. Also these three hospitals are getting overburdened. We are therefore thinking about asking surgeons to dedicate a sizeable amount of their practice hours to peripheral hospitals as well,” said Mhaiksar. 

Dr Seema Mallik, chief medical superintendent of Bhabha Hospital and in-charge of all peripheral hospitals said that many a times due to lack of surgeons, patients have to travel to either of the three major hospital for even for a minor surgery.