Nurses deprived of medical benefits

Nurses are highly prone to various communicable diseases and viral infections like cholera, diphtheria, swine-flu, diarrhoea, chickenpox just to name a few, as they are apparently in direct contact with patients

Medak: From the moment a human life comes into this world till the moment it leaves the world (in most of the cases), the one person who gives her/his/other’s selfless care to us is a ‘nurse.’ But the irony is that even several decades after the United Nations had formally been observing May 12 as ‘International Nurses Day’; thousands of nurses in Telangana are still begging for healthcare support from the government and hospitals which employ them.

While nurses working in primary and urban health centres under Director of Health, and hospitals coming under Director of Medical Education are being able to avail health cards for treatment of their own ailments, thousands of nurses working under Vaidya Vidhana Parishad are yet to receive any kind of medical aid from the government in the form of issue of health cards to them.

Andhra Pradesh Vaidya Vidhana Parishad (APVVP) was established back in 1994, after an ordinance was brought-in by the then Chief Minister NT Rama Rao. It was made an autonomous body headed by a commissioner. All Community Care Centres, Area Hospitals and District Hospitals came under the aegis of APVVP. All payments to these hospitals come from the Commissioner and not from the state exchequer.

Nurses are highly prone to various communicable diseases and viral infections like cholera, diphtheria, swine-flu, diarrhoea, chickenpox just to name a few, as they are apparently in direct contact with patients. The impact of nurses contracting these illnesses also affects the family members of nurses directly. Moreover, nurses work in rotating shifts where they also have to work night shift for 10 days a month unless they are those lucky ones working in general shift (8 am to 5 pm).

All these reasons combined emphasize on the need for the quality healthcare they deserve for dedicating their lives for the noble-godly profession. Nurses working under Vaidya Vidhana Parishd are still waiting for Telangana government to protect them by issuing them health cards.

They are also encountering a surfeit of other problems including lack of promotions and dearness allowance, delay in payment of arrears of pay revision commission. With no fresh recruitment happening there is huge gap between number of nurses per number of patients/beds. To add to these problems, contract nurses have yet to be regularised. The nurses also do not have the option to become DM&HO despite serving for a long time.

Some private hospitals like Yashoda hospitals are offering insurance to their nurses on a 50/50 contribution basis for providing healthcare to the tune of Rs 1 lakh. They also deduct amount payable for ESI. But there are many private hospitals which do have even have the basic incentives.

“State government bringing-in the new reforms to healthcare in the form of ‘Patient Care Persons’ by outsourcing hospital care to contractors who will employ their own staff and get paid by the government per bed (from admission to discharge of the patient) would further jeopardize the salaries and other benefits which nurses are entitled to,

because the contractor who may not necessarily have a humanistic understanding of nurses may not really be worried about aspects like ‘healthcare’ which is paramount to their well-being,” said Bheem Rao Patil, a leader of Telangana Medical Employees Union.There are around 7000 to 12000 nurses working in government hospitals across the state. In Vaidya Vidhana Parishad alone there are 12000 staff (nurses, chemists, doctors, ward boys) all combined.

By Vivek Bhoomi