Even as full time psychologists or counsellors are required in the Asia’s biggest TB hospital, GTB Hospital at Sewri as per the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP), patients have to rely on part time psychologists from Mumbai-based KEM Hospital who are unable to counsel patients due to time constraints among other issues.
Recruitment of full time counsellors is the need of the hour as TB patients undergoing first line and second line treatment suffer tremendous psychological side-effects which necessitates the need for counselling. says a health expert, “Medicines taken by a TB patient pose certain side effects which are psychological in nature and therefore intervention from qualified psychologists or counsellors is the need of the hour.”
Due to lack of timely intervention from the counsellors the situation has turned worse as four patients have committed suicide since January due to lack of an accountable system to counsel patients.
Further compounding the problem is the fact that post of Medical Social Worker (MSW) has been lying vacant for the past one year. MSW job is to rehabilitate the patients to a suitable place through the intervention of government agencies or NGOs.
The BMC-run TB Hospital is known to treat patients ranging from first line treatment to critically ill MDR TB patients. Some patients have escaped the attention of hospital administration as they were later on left unattended by their relatives for reasons unknown to the hospital authorities. A lady from an affluent NRI family eventually met with an ill fated death last year as nobody came to help her reflecting also the amount of social ostracism faced by the TB patients.
Asia's biggest TB hospital can now hardly afford to admit new patients because old patients have not been discharged due to bureaucratic hurdles and red tapism. Structural audit has also rendered 250 beds useless for the most sought after hospital of TB care in the city.
Doctors are showing their helplessness saying that new patients cannot be admitted despite the fact that treatment to new TB patients for 7 days at a stretch can considerably bring down the infection rate by 90 per cent and hence treatment could be completed successfully. Only patients in the advanced stages of treatment are being admitted for the past 5 to 6 months thus overburdening the already crippled set up.
TB patients on not being discharged further develop complications despite getting treated successfully. Drug addicts also find an easy entry into the hospital as a part of the rehabilitative process driven by social workers and the police has further aggravated the situation.