The country is presently seeing a rapid surge in the number of coronavirus positive cases every day. The stage wise opening up of the lockdown is also posing severe challenges before the government as far as the control and containment of the situation at hand is concerned. Amidst this, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has raised an alarm about the malpractices that have been going on in several private hospitals of Delhi wherein patents suffering from COVID-19 are being denied treatment and the hospitals are demanding exorbitant fees from them.
A couple of private hospitals in the Capital have been found to be refusing patients treatment and in cases where they are agreeing to admit the patient, they are charging lakhs of rupees for a hospital bed. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal strongly condemned this malpractice and said that stringent action will be initiated against hospitals that engaged in such “black-marketing of beds.”
He also highlighted the fact that Delhi had no dearth of hospital beds and the national capital was quite adequately equipped to deal with COVID-19 patients. Looking at the recent black-marketing of beds, he said that from now on his government would ensure to keep a tally on available beds in each private hospitals to avoid the malpractice in future. He said that the government has come to know about a few hospitals that are refusing to give admission to coronavirus patients and indulging in “black-marketing of beds”.
He assured that strong action will be initiated against such hospitals because amid such a great pandemic they cannot afford to refuse patients treatment.
He assured that while it may take some time to decode the mafia involved, the government will surely break the nexus and ensure that the malpractice discontinues. Arvind Kejriwal warned that these hospitals may have political connections but they shouldn’t think that this would save them.
During a virtual press briefing, CM Arvind Kejriwal highlighted that most of the private hospitals in Delhi were good and only some were engaged in this malpractice and said that the government was working with private hospitals to smoothly reserve 20% of beds for COVID-19 patients. The chief minister also clarified that unlike what was being reported by a select section of the media, testing for coronavirus hadn’t been stopped in Delhi and that currently 36 government and private laboratories were doing testing for coronavirus. Action has also been taken against six labs for irregularities.
