Soon, accommodation will be made available to relatives of patients who come for treatment at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Parel. A building of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) in Chembur will offer 300 rooms to such people during the period of their kin's treatment.
Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) is one of the premier institutes in the country that work for cancer patients dedicatedly. Throughout the year, patients come from different parts of the country in the hope of getting better treatment at the hospital. The TMH treats 60,000 patients every year, and out of these as many as 40,000 are from outside Maharashtra.
However, hundreds of poor patients and their relatives who come for treatment at the hospital have to live on footpaths outside it as they cannot afford to stay in hotels. The nearby Nana Palkar Smruti Kendra and the Sant Gadgebaba Maharaj Dharmashala do accommodate as many people as they can, but they are invariably overcrowded.
"Relatives of patients need a place to stay and we try our best to provide them accommodation. But we are also helpless because the demand is huge. We are in talks with the state government regarding this and the Chembur building can easily accommodate 300 people. The government is very positive; we hope that soon we will get possession of this building," said SH Jafri, public relations officer, TMH.
TMH has its own facility at Bandra but it is almost always full. Poor patients have no other option but to chose to stay on footpaths outside the hospital. Some patients need treatment on an OPD basis, and therefore, they cannot be admitted in the hospital.
When dna contacted UPS Madan, metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA, he said: "We are agreeable in principle to give some rooms to TMH for this purpose."
