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Cows graze at the site for a goverment hospital—it went from a 100-bed plan in 2007 to a 460-bed promise in 2021—in the predominantly Muslim area of Okhla, whose residents now allege communal bias for the delay. The Delhi government set up three hospitals in non-Muslim areas, all approved five years after Okhla’s. We chased the trail of paper and promises.
New Delhi: Every fortnight, Abdul Samad, 21, takes his mother for medical evaluation and treatment, to Safdarjung Hospital, 12 km to the west from their home in the teeming inner lanes of Batla House in south Delhi’s Okhla neighbourhood.
Samad is up at 5 am to ensure they reach one of Delhi’s largest and busiest government hospitals to beat the long queue for treatment. But they must still stand two hours in a queue before his mother sees a doctor.
Samad is wary of the crowd of patients, and fearful of Covid-19 infection, the anxiety worse after a crippling second wave in April and May brought Delhi to its knees.
Each trip to Safdarjung hospital costs Samad Rs 400, made more expensive by rising fuel costs. It is not a sum the family can afford. The only earning member is Samad’s brother, a salesman, whose monthly salary is Rs 10,000, a major part of which goes towards rent.
There are five private hospitals in Okhla, but Samad’s family cannot afford any of them.
“A government hospital in the area would have saved me these costs,” Samad told Article 14.
Okhla has no government hospital. The five private ones—the high-end Indraprastha Apollo and Fortis Escorts, then Holy Family and Al-Shifa hospitals, and the smallest of the five, Cribs Hospital—are mostly unaffordable to the people of Batla House, an economically depressed neighbourhood.
Grazing Cattle Where A Hospital Should Be
The World Health Organisation recommends five beds per population of 1,000. Delhi’s Economic Survey 2020-21 said there were 2.74 beds per 1,000 population, government and private, in Delhi; the city has 1.05 govt hospital beds per 1,000 population.
Read more- https://article-14.com/post/in-india-s-capital-a-muslim-dominated-neighbourhood-has-had-a-govt-hospital-for-14-years-on-paper-616f7d0659ecf