BMC tells HC its helpline assists non-COVID-19 patients too

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday informed the Bombay High Court that its helpline number 1916 provides information regarding hospital beds, medical assistance etc, for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

The BMC's counsel, senior advocate Anil Sakhre told a bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta that the helpline has been operational since April this year and had attended to over 60,000 calls.

Earlier this month, the court had directed the civic body and the state government to consider suggestions made by some petitioners and private institutions to ensure medical treatment for non-COVID-19 patients.

The court was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by a lawyer and social activists highlighting the plight of people suffering from several chronic or serious ailments being turned away from clinics and hospitals.

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In the previous hearings, senior advocate Gayatri Singh and advocate Ankit Kulkarni, the counsels for one of the petitioners had pointed out that the state and civic authorities did not have a detailed action plan for non-COVID-19 patients and many had died due to lack of treatment.

Singh and other petitioners had suggested that the authorities must come up with a helpline for non-COVID-19 patients to assist them with ambulance, mobile medical aid, list of hospitals and clinics providing treatment.

On Tuesday, both the BMC and the state submitted a list of measures they had adopted from the petitioners' suggestions or those that they had already been practicing to help non-COVID-19 patients.

They informed that mobile clinics and door-to-door screening were already operational across the state.

The court directed the petitioners to go through the state and BMC's affidavit and said it will examine the same in detail in the next hearing on May 29. 

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