Good News Mumbaikars! Medical emergency helpline 104 is back and ringing

State health department restarts emergency civic hospitalshelpline receives over 140 complaints in just nine days of launchingIn the nine days since the emergency helpline 104 was relaunched to accept all medical grievances of Mumbaikars it has received at least 140 complaints Most of them are about the unavailability of doctors in hospitals According to state health department sources the helpline receives more than 20 complaints against doctors every day In March this year Mumbais medical emergency services took a hit after doctors went on strikeState health minister says citizens can help the government tackle the crisis by immediately reporting about the unavailability of doctors at various hospitalsThe strike was to protest the violence against their fraternity by the kin of patients Following the incident the Bombay High Court had ordered disciplinary action against many resident doctors and urged them to resume work immediately While the issue has long been dealt with doctors around the city continue to skip visitsCitizens can report about the unavailability of doctors at hospitalsEarlier the helpline only offered help under the bloodoncall service wherein a motorcycleriding health department representative delivered packages of blood to patients within an hour in the radius of 40 km While 104 continues to offer this service now people can also lodge complaints with the helpline If a doctor or a hospital is found to be at fault following investigations by the state health department they will be served notices to mend their ways The helpline also guides people to the nearest hospital or local doctor in case of emergenciesAlso read Unified helpline number for MaharashtraThe issueSpeaking to midday a senior health officer from the Directorate of Health Service DHS said Every month we receive several complaints about the unavailability of doctors in city hospitals In order to check doctor attendance issues the state government had made biometric attendance compulsory across hospitals but even then the number of complaints hasnt gone down By relaunching this helpline and adding the new feature wherein citizen can lodge complaints with the health department we wanted to give people a direct channel to file complaints against the offenders We feel it is a step in the right direction and will help Mumbaikars immensely in the days to comeState health minister Deepak Sawant said We have got numerous complaints pertaining to the dearth of onduty doctors in hospitals Citizens can help us tackle this crisis by reporting the unavailability of doctors It will make the doctors more answerable It will also help us monitor and rectify the attendance situation in hospitals in the stateThe punishmentApparently the health department will investigate the complaints within 48 hours of them being lodged Doctors with dismal attendance run the risk of getting suspended tooSpeaking to midday Dr Satish Pawar of DHS said We will pay close attention to the complaints and react to them within a span of 48 hours Strict action will be initiated if the doctor was found unavailable due to invalid reasons Besides deducting their payments for the day the errant doctors will also be served notices Further action may follow a detailed investigation into the complaints48No of hours within which the dept will react to complaints