Posted: Updated – 12:17 AM, Sat – Nov 12 22
Hyderabad: The establishment of Basthi Dawakhanas to provide quality healthcare facilities to the urban poor has resulted in a significant drop in outpatient inflow in Hyderabad’s main tertiary super-specialty hospital.
The decline in the number of outpatients is an encouraging sign as it shows that Basthi Dawakhanas has fulfilled its task of ensuring the provision of quality primary healthcare services to economically vulnerable areas of urban slums and reducing the burden on super-specialized government hospitals.
All major tertiary hospitals in Hyderabad, including Osmania General Hospital (OGH), Gandhi Hospital, Fever Hospital and Niloufer Hospital, have seen a significant drop in OP patient inflow over the past few years.
The Government of Telangana has established a total of 331 Basthi Dawakhanas in areas under the various municipalities, out of which there are more than 200 such facilities in the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area. In the past two years, Basthi Dawakhanas has served nearly 2.1 million patients, which also includes repeat visits by individual patients.
“Because of the success of Basthi Dawakhanas, the Chief Minister has directed us to increase such facilities to 500. By December-January, we aim to have at least 100 more Basthi Dawakhanas in Telangana. These facilities relieve the burden on tertiary hospitals , tertiary hospitals are now focusing on handling more complex diseases,” Health Minister T Harish Rao said on Friday.
Due to the success of Basthi Dawakhanas in Hyderabad, similar facilities were set up in other cities like Warangal, Nizamabad, Ramagondam and Mahabnagar. “It is clear that Basthi Dawakhanas is able to provide quality medical care to patients with minor ailments. This provides a lot of breathing room for tertiary teaching hospitals, which have now started to focus on performing complex surgeries,” Harish said.
