Click to play videoMumbai: Eighteen-year-old Raheen Sheikh is suffering from fever, body pain, and breathlessness - all symptoms of H1N1, but it's been four days and she's still struggling to get diagnosed, waiting in long queues outside a public hospital.
"We went to a private practitioner who told us to go to a bigger hospital. We decided to go to KEM and from there we were referred to Naidu hospital," says her father Azim Sheikh.
Pune currently has four public hospitals and nine private hospitals approved to treat symptomatic patients, besides 30 other testing centres. But, only two of the nine designated private hospitals are admitting the more serious patients.
PCMC doctor-cum-private practitioner, Dr Santosh Latkar says, "Despite all the care the treatment, especially due to late entry, is risky. And besides after what happened post the first death at a private hospital, most private practitioners are more careful."
This is something that the Pune administration vehemently denies, saying that private hospitals can only work to the best of their capacities.
The PMC Commissioner says, "Private hospitals are to conduct as private hospitals. They are socially responsible organisations and will definitely treat patients when the situation is critical. They will admit patients according to their capacity."
So even as the existing infrastructure of government hospitals gets stretched with innumerable suspected cases flowing in day-in-and-day-out, some of the cases are being shifted out only to inoculate them from the hot-beds of the virus pandemic.
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter and Google+)
 |
 |
 |
|
displayed with permission. Use of the CNN name and/or logo on or as part of CNN-IBN does not derogate from the intellectual property rights of Cable News Network in respect of them.