Aam Aadmi Party has called out BMC Commissioner over his claims of proposed polyclinics with Mohalla clinics as a comparison of apples and oranges, adding that the Shiv Sena couldn't even get the basics right in 30 years.
The party further asked BMC Commissioner Iqbal Chahal to fix Mumbai's healthcare system beginning with primary healthcare and offered to help BMC with the technical expertise, through the Delhi Govt. The party was reacting to Iqbal Chahal's statement where he allegedly claimed to have studied the Delhi Model and had claimed that BMC polyclinics will be better than Delhi's Mohalla Clinics.
"The BMC has 187 public dispensaries, which are supposed to function as primary health centres. A vast majority of them are dysfunctional due to poor infrastructure and flawed operations. The BMC hasn't been able to fix something as basic as primary health care, over the last 30 odd years," the party said.
"Mumbai's BMC hospital's bed capacity has remained stagnant, despite a steep rise in population. For anything and everything, the poor are compelled to go to peripheral and tertiary hospitals, which leads to their capacity being overwhelmed and the quality of service deteriorating," the party further said.
"For the record, Delhi has a three-tier public health system. Primary healthcare or Mohalla Clinics, Polyclinics or Secondary Healthcare and Tertiary Hospitals. Delhi has Universal Free and Quality Healthcare for all its citizens. A mohalla clinic is at an avg distance of 1 km from the community that it was built to serve. Diagnostic tests are free, patient records are digitized, doctors are remunerated handsomely and should it take more than 30 days for a government facility to action a prescribed operation, the same can be availed free of cost, in a private facility of the patient's cost," it noted while speaking about the health infrastructure of the national capital.
"Iqbal Chahal's comparison is one of the apples with oranges and that of willful obfuscation. The fact is that healthcare has never been BMC's priority. They have actually turned it, into a money-making racket, like every other department, by outsourcing big-ticket items," it added.
"Delhi's Healthcare Model has won global acclaim and UN accolades. Why can't it be implemented in Mumbai? We will be more than happy to share Delhi Govt's expertise with the BMC for the same", said Preeti Sharma Menon, AAP National Executive Member and Mumbai Prabhari.
