BHOPAL: Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday shot a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to restore the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC) “to its former glory”. The former chief minister suggested BMHRC could be designated by the Parliament as an autonomous PG medical hospital on the lines of PGI, Chandigarh and Jipmer, Puducherry.
“After the Bhopal Gas tragedy, along with compensation there was a provision that a corpus should be made with which a hospital would be constructed. A large plot of land was allocated and a good hospital was constructed,” Digvijaya said.
Digvijaya said that BMHRC operated till 2010. Meanwhile, a number of private hospitals came up in Bhopal and all good doctors left. “The private hospitals paid better salaries and appointed these doctors. Today, despite having a good infrastructure, treatment in BMHRC is not as good. And there are still many gas victims who have pulmonary problems since their lungs were adversely affected during the 1984 gas leak tragedy,” Singh argued.
In his letter to the PM, Digvijaya wrote, “It (BMHRC) was the first hospital in Bhopal to provide super-specialty services such as gastrointestinal surgery, cardiology, heart surgery and brain surgery. To begin with, there was an excellent team of doctors to treat the patients, as their terms of employment were very competitive. Once the government took over the management of the hospital in 2010, most of these doctors left the hospital as the government unilaterally changed the terms of employment.”
The veteran leader also informed the PM that doctors left because there was “no protection from vested interests – NGOs who interfered on a daily basis in the functioning of the hospital.”
Digvijaya’s letter also stated, “The honourable Supreme Court had taken cognisance of the situation, and in 2012, had ordered that all vacancies of doctors should be filled, and such conditions should be provided that the doctors are not compelled to resign from BMHRC. In spite of this, it is seen that there are a number of vacancies of specialists and super-specialists. Because of this, many patients are unable to get treatment at the BMHRC.”
Digvijaya said that once the hospital is autonomous, renowned doctors can be brought with attractive salaries . “That is why, I urged the PM to discuss the issue with the Union health minister. A bill should be brought in the next parliamentary session, so that Bhopal can emerge as a good medical treatment centre,” he added.
