Govt to install 90 dialysis machines in 5 hospitals

In a move that will help thousands of kidney patients struggling to get treatment, the Delhi government will install 90 more dialysis machines in five of its hospitals by March 2018. The machines will be installed under Public Private Partnership (PPP).

So far, there are only 60 such machines under PPP mode and 14 machines under the government mode to deal with a large number of patients flocking to the government hospitals on a regular basis. The government is managing the machines at Lok Nayak Hospital, Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) and Baba Saheb Ambedkar (BSA) Hospital where the machines are mostly used in emergency cases.

"These new machines will provide aid to those people who are in need of treatment but are sometimes ignored due to emergency cases. The waiting for the occupancy of these machines is too long," said Dr Kirti Bhushan, director general of health services (DGHS), Delhi government.

At present, there are 60 dialysis machines at three Delhi government hospitals — Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP), Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality, and Hedgewar Arogya Sansthan — which were installed in 2013 under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model by the then Congress government.

Under the initiative, the AAP government plans to install the machines in Janakpuri super-specialty Hospital, Maharishi Valmiki, Bhagwan Mahavir, GTB and BSA hospital by the end of the financial year. According to the officials, the treatment will be free of cost for those below poverty line (BPL) and for the non-BPL patients, it will cost around Rs 5,000

In the 2016-17 Budget, the Union government had announced the National Dialysis Service Programme that aims to provide dialysis services to renal patients in all district hospitals across the country. Patients with chronic kidney disease need dialysis, a procedure in which a patient is hooked to a machine which is used as an artificial replacement for lost kidney function. The machine removes waste and excess water from the blood.