Private hospitals fleecing patients
Vizianagaram: The seasonal diseases like malaria and dengue became money making machines for private nursing homes and diagnosis centres in the district. The medical practitioners, medical labs and blood banks are fleecing the money from them. Dengue is one of the dangerous diseases spreading as the population of mosquitoes is high in rainy season. Anyhow, reduction of platelets in blood, along with high fever is the symptom of dengue.
The recovering the platelets is the major remedy for dengue and the local hospitals and doctors are collecting huge sums for admitting the dengue cases in their nursing homes. They are reportedly creating panic among the kin of the patients and threatening that the patient would die unless he or she is admitted to their respective hospitals to recover the platelets count.
Obviously, one should be prepared to spend minimum of Rs 40,000 to get rid of dengue. Some of the families had spent even Rs 1 lakh too. K Swathi, a housewife of Parvathipuram, said: ‘My daughter was affected with dengue last year and we spent around Rs.70,000 at a hospital in Vizag for her recovery”.
Generally, a healthy person has 1.5 lakhs of platelets and during the dengue, the number would be dropped to less than 50,000 and this situation becoming a boon for private practitioners, she pointed out.
They are demanding a huge money from the family members of the patients to inject the platelets which can be extracted from the healthy persons. Generally, common fever also affects the platelets count and the number would come down to less than one lakh. But the private nursing homes are terrifying the patients and suggesting them to get platelets to save their lives.
Dr K Vijayalakshmi, DMHO, said: “No private hospital here has the facility to confirm dengue. Only the government general hospital and KGH in Vizag can confirm the case. But I came to know that some of the private nursing homes are spinning money from the patients in the name of dengue. We will look into such cases”.