Mid-Day Opinion: Dormitories for patients’ kin will prove beneficial

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It may be just what the doctor ordered. This paper's report said that Sion hospital's redevelopment project is set to include dormitories for relatives accompanying admitted patients. This means offering dedicated accommodation instead of people literally sleeping in hospital corridors. The proposed facility is expected to benefit thousands who travel to Mumbai for treatment at the city's major civic hospitals.

The new plan to establish dormitories for those accompanying patients admitted to Sion Hospital may become a turning point in the city's public health sector, and that is a welcome blueprint. In a space-starved city, where rents reach vertigo-inducing heights, it is simply impossible for relatives to afford staying close to Sion Hospital as their loved ones undergo treatment.

A doctor observed that families of patients are also extremely susceptible to contracting infections and then passing them on to patients, as with no dedicated area for the kin of patients, they sit in the passages or anywhere they can on the premises. Though still to be finalised, the fact that the dormitory system has been thought about and has a real chance of being incorporated in the final design is heartening.

Leaders and hospital management do acknowledge that longer treatments make it impossible for patients and their family members to keep travelling from their home town. With unaffordable to zilch accommodation in the city, people end up living on the facility's premises.

Hospitals can and should, in fact, charge a very reasonable, nominal amount for the same, with the accent on affordable.