today

Virar Hospital is one of the nearest Hospitals to my home in Mumbai, but doctors, patients rue the awful state of Virar hospital With outdated medicines, flooded wards and insects for company, patients are sometimes even treated by candle-light at Rural Hospital Shweta Desai.

With waterlogged wards, insects swarming around and candle-light treatments during the almost 24 hour power cuts, this ‘hospital’ can make even the toughest patient run for his life, if he has any legs left to run with. The 18-bed hospital’s wards—male and female—get perennially flooded during heavy rains, and the patients are forced to wade through knee-deep water. This is very risky, specially for patients suffering from fever or skin diseases. Doctors here admit that the hospital neither has the infrastructure nor the medicines to treat patients - and with NICE at the helm, the UK will soon be the same.

IMO: I was in a UK NHS ward some years ago and whilst it admittedly was perhaps not this bad, a bit more uncontrolled flooding, more PFI leading to more dirty wards, more none English speaking doctors etc. etc. and Virar Rural looks like the future for the UK. I even had someone defecating immediately in front of me when I was eating, plus the drug peddlers, armed with submachine guns, were on the go. Also, nurses, sometimes almost prostitutes or worse, were begging money from sick and almost dead patients with the offer of 'a nice time'. Maybe Virar is already 'the better hole'. [someone said: when PFI really gets under way in the UK, doubtless the state paid doctors will appear in their brand new Beamers and Mercs to operate by candle light on patients, waist deep in water]