It seems to be the habit of the BMC to keep announcing better facilities at maternity homes due to reduce increasing burden on big civic hospitals in the city. In reality, these maternity homes are lacking medical facilities along with doctors and nurses. This is causing inconvenience to the pregnant women visiting one such maternity home in Oshiwara. Due to fewer facilities, these pregnant women are shifted to Cooper Hospital for medical treatment. This persisting problem has forced Shiv Sena corporator Rajul Patel to ask the BMC to shut its maternity homes if it fails to manage them. This severe criticism from their own corporate has put the ruling party in a tight position.
Patel literally counted the drawbacks of maternity homes when a proposal of recruitment of nurses at maternity home came for discussion in the standing committee meeting held on Wednesday. The Oshiwara maternity home lacks neonatal ventilator and incubator and pregnant women are shifted to Cooper Hospital but this hospital does not admit newly born babies, it is alleged.
Another Sena corporator, Mangesh Satamkar, also pointed out that Rawali maternity home has no Doppler machine as well as doctors. Even if the number of posts is increased in these maternity home there is no guarantee of better facilities for patients, said Satamkar.
Congress corporator Kamarjahan Siddiqui also raised the issue of pregnant women’s inconvenience at Maulana Azad maternity home in Malad Malwani. Former deputy mayor Alka Kerkar expressed regrets over the lacklustre facilities at newly built nursing home at Bandra East. The leader of the House, Yashwant Jadhav, raised the issue of cancer hospital being built on the land of Ahilyabai Holkar nursing home in Byculla.
Addressing the issue, additional municipal commissioner Pallavi Darade informed that all the 28 nursing homes in the city are functioning and five of them are to be provided with better facilities. She also informed that Oshiwara maternity home lacks the neonatal care unit.
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