Mumbai lacks in paediatric cardiac care

MUMBAI: The refusal of BMC-run hospitals to admit a three-day-old baby turning blue and his subsequent death last week show up Mumbai's poor health infrastructure, especially for children with heart problems.

The megacity has only three hospitals with dedicated teams to treat babies with heart problems. Most public hospitals don't have dedicated teams but operate on kids along with adult patients. "The gap between demand and supply in the paediatric cardiac cases in Mumbai is shocking,'' said Dr Vinod Agarwal, paediatric heart surgeon at Fortis Hospital in Mulund. Besides Fortis, Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Andheri (W) and SevenHills in Andheri (E) are the only centres with dedicated teams to handle such cases.

Contrast Mumbai with Chennai, which has nine hospitals offering paediatric cardiac operations. Babies have tiny hearts, little bigger than a grape, making their operations a complex procedure.

Secondly, states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka offer insurance support for children needing cardiac surgery. "Maharashtra too has such a programme in the Rajiv Gandhi Arogya Yojana, but it offers monetary support only to children operated in public hospitals and a few private ones," said a doctor working in a civic hospital.

Considering that 2 lakh children are born every year with congenital heart problems, it's important for governments to work out means to financially support such families with heart operations, said a doctor. The doctor added that if more hospitals were included in the Rajiv Gandhi Yojana, then more families could benefit.

On October 16, Chembur residents Babasaheb Dagabkhaire and his wife roamed the city with their three-day-old baby for eight hours in search of a hospital bed and ventilator support. In the end, the baby died. The couple has filed acase with Chembur police.

BMC's additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar said the BMC was working on ways to improve paediatric cardiac care. "By December 2013, we will set up NICUs in five peripheral hospitals," she said. The BMC will also upgrade some of its maternity homes to mother-and-child centres. "We will augment our NICU set-up in existing hospitals in the next financial year," she said.

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