State Spending Rs 100 Crore On 12,000 Dialysis Patients

Telangana Health Minister T Harish Rao said that the government was spending Rs 100 crore per annum on 12,000 dialysis patients in 43 government hospitals in the state.

The minister was speaking as the chief guest at a function celebrating the reaching of the one million dialyses mark by the Bhagwan Mahavir Jain Relief Foundation Trust (BMJRFT), on Saturday night at Jewel Gardens in Secunderabad.

Rao said that 150 kidney transplants were done free of cost each year in government hospitals in Telangana.

"We had 3 dialysis centres before Telangana was formed. But after we came into power we took the number to 43," the minister said.

He also noted that the BMJRFT, which had made a moderate beginning in 2009 by providing 16 dialyses a month, had reached 500 a month now, and had achieved a world record by performing one million dialyses in the last 12 years, and that too at a subsidised price of Rs 300 per session as against the Rs 1,200-3,000 charged by corporate hospitals.

Congratulating the trust for its gargantuan humanitarian effort, he also promised P C Parakh, the Chairman of the trust, that he would help resolve all their outstanding issues, and that a meeting would be scheduled within a week between the trust's representatives and the relevant government officials. The minister also said that he would take up the request made by the trust for land to set up a hospital with Chief Minister Mr Chandrashekar Rao.

Earlier, Parekh had requested the minister to look into their outstanding issues such as revising the rates of Aarogyasri for dialysis that had been set several years back, speeding up the process of releasing payments to the trust (it took 7 to 8 months to receive payments, Parekh claimed), and needing to share Rs 150 out of the Rs 300 charged per patient with the King Koti hospital.

He said that the trust had performed 60% of the 1 million dialyses for BPL patients, and needed support from the government to continue its work.