PUNE, DEC 25: Several heart patients awaiting the life-saving bypass surgery at Aundh Chest Hospital may have to wait for a while as the administration is taking its own sweet time to repair the brand new generator which went kaput a month ago.The Hriday Mitra Pratishthan, a charitable trust, is up in arms and has threatened to launch an agitation if the generator was not repaired by January 5, Shrikant Mundada, Chairman of the trust said in a statement issued today.
Mundada lamented that a majority of patients at the government-run Aundh Chest Hospital were poor and in desperate need of the bypass surgery. He said the Pratishthan had time and again demanded the installation of a generator without which the surgeries cannot be conducted. The generator which costs at least Rs 14 lakh was installed after the trust members persisted for at least 10 years.
At the present, there are at least 70-80 patients who require surgery out of which 15 are serious cases, Mundada said. He also pointed out that their various demands includes shifting of the cardiac department at Aundh Chest hospital to Sassoon Hospital.
The state government which has recently installed a Cath Lab costing Rs 3.5 crore at Sassoon enables poor patients to get an angiography done at Rs 4000 and a balloon angioplasty at Rs 10,000. While the Cath Lab is yet to be functional, the Pratishthan has urged the government to shift the cardiac department and the operation theatre set-up to Sassoon.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
