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Most Hyderabad Old City residents shun Govt hospitals
Reflecting dwindling health care services in government hospitals, most of the residents in parts of Old city are hesitant to go back to the government hospital after an initial visit. Majority prefer treatment in private hospitals close to their place of living, even if it leads to borrowing money or taking loans.
Majority prefer treatment in private hospitals even by borrowing money
Hyderabad: Reflecting dwindling health care services in government hospitals, most of the residents in parts of Old city are hesitant to go back to the government hospital after an initial visit. Majority prefer treatment in private hospitals close to their place of living, even if it leads to borrowing money or taking loans.
A door-to-door survey conducted by Helping Hand Foundation (HHF) found that 70 % of the respondents who are suffering from chronic diseases or disability have sought a loan to meet their medical expenses.
One of the reasons is majority of them accessing services at the government hospitals are not satisfied with the response of the hospital staff and availability of the facilities.
Only 4 % of the respondents interviewed said they access health care at Area Hospitals (TS Vaidya Vidhan Parishads), close to their place of residence. These findings corroborate with the findings of National Family Health Survey (2015-16) and Social Development Report (SDR, 2017) released by the government.
The study brought to light that 21% of residents were found to be suffering from hypertension or high blood pressure, 16% from diabetes & hypertension (co morbidity) & 8 % were suffering from diabetes alone, while another 8 % residents have cardiovascular disease.
“There is an acute need to ramp up primary health care facilities or the Urban Health Post, presently the UHPs particularly the ones in the Old city areas, which remain grossly dysfunctional, understaffed and are not optimally functioning and need a major overhaul to cater to the needs of the poor,” said HHF president Mujtaba Hasan Askari.
One of the interesting facts brought out by the study is that in spite of suffering from severe and chronic ailments, 10 % of the respondents are not interested in seeking treatment either in government or private hospitals, but prefer alternative medicine, which includes going to faith healers and spiritual leaders.
“Nearly 87 % households, which were surveyed have one or more people with chronic disease or disability, which makes it every second household in the areas surveyed has a chronic health problems,” said Mujtaba.
This door to door survey which was conducted in May covered 88 localities of Baba Nagar, Talabkatta, Kurmaguda, Riyasath Nagar, Saidabad, Shaheen Nagar, Hussaini Alam, Moin Bagh, Kalapathar, Tadbun, Edi Bazar, Chandrayangutta, Barkas, Hashmatpet, Pisalbanda, Yakutpura, Bandlaguda and Chanchalguda. From these localities 5485 households were picked up randomly.
