Health

This is the first of a two part series on why health insurance companies refuse to reimburse treatment cost of mental illness, despite laws and insurance regulator guidelines saying they must treat mental illness on par with any other physical illness. "I bought a health insurance policy from a well-known insurance agency in 2014,” says V Naresh, 73, (name changed on request). “In January 2020, my 39-year-old son, who was diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, was admitted to rehab for 25 days. In March 2020, I put in a claim of around Rs. 2.75 lakh for the treatment, but it…

For over a decade now, residents of Indira Nagar slums in Mumbai's Sewree have been waiting for a road that would not be an invitation to diseases in their homes. But that has not happened yet. With the arrival of the monsoon, the road adjoining their makeshift houses gets waterlogged making their living conditions difficult and threatening public health.  "The water and mud accumulate when it rains heavily, even taxis don't come here. People here frequently fall sick in the rains. There have been so many people who have had dengue or malaria in the past," said 42-year-old Laxmi Harijan,…

Poor living and work conditions. Poor nutrition. The inevitable outcome — is poor health. Bangalore’s migrant workers, many of whom are from far-off states like Bihar, seem to be permanently mired in this cycle. With little hope of any relief from the state. Health is a particular worry for many, given their poor working conditions. The contractors who employ the workers rarely help when they fall ill. Neither are the workers able to access any of the central and state government schemes that offer them free, or cheap, health care. Mohammad Amar, 22, from Purnia in Bihar came to Bangalore…

On June 22, 91 out of the 1,648 new cases of COVID in Mumbai were hospitalised, taking the total number of occupied beds to 666. The city makes up for more than half of the daily reported cases in the state as Maharashtra had 3,260 patients on the same day.  Even as cases in Mumbai have dropped since June 15th, when the daily load shot up to 2,348, and active patients have dropped from 14,146 on June 21st to 13,501 on June 22nd, the number of people occupying hospital beds has increased. Currently, there are 24,765 beds reserved for COVID patients. The latest…

“Homeless people in Chennai do not want to come with me,” says Nandhini, a social worker working for the Hope Charitable Trust in Chennai. “I have been spit on, verbally and physically abused by people going through a mental health episode when I approach them and ask them to come with me to get proper treatment. There are many stories I can tell you where the same people later became my friends when they got help and got better,” says Nandhini.  Nandhini reminisces about the time when a girl named Priya from a well-to-do family in Chennai was rendered temporarily…

Organ donation and body donation have been gaining momentum in India, particularly so in Tamil Nadu which has been a pioneer and leader in transplants. Despite the inroads made in the state, the awareness among the general public on organ donation needs to increase manifold in order to meet existing requirements. Currently, India as a whole requires around 2,00,000 kidneys, 50,000 hearts and 50,000 livers annually for those requiring transplants. The current annual availability, however, is a meagre 10,000 kidneys and 1,000 livers. This is very disheartening. With a population of more than 130 crores, the organ donation rate needs…

Most government hospitals and clinics across the country may be a shabby sight. But for the poor, they are the only affordable medical treatment option available. Yet, a majority of the poor prefer to borrow and go to private health centres, as revealed by the findings of the National Family Health Survey-5 recently released by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya. As per the survey, the number of patients knocking at the doors of public health care facilities has dropped from 55.1% in 2015-16, to 49.9% in 2019-21. Respondents mainly cited “poor quality” of health care to justify their preference for private…

“I just want to run away; want to fly. I have been living here for the last 17 years**, waiting for my brother to come and take me. We have a bakery shop. He will come and take me back.” The raw words expressed by a woman with mental illness (or Persons with Mental Illness, PMIs), living in the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, Delhi. She, and others like her, had been abandoned.  Some are rescued by NGOs while some get a new label, ‘homeless with mental illness’. Many a time, according to psychiatrist Dr Shashi Rai, family…

“I was in the fourth standard when I began to see things, hear voices, often my jaw used to get locked. Everything appeared foggy. I used to feel as if I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to break out but couldn’t because it was untouchable. When I shared my thoughts with my mother she just told me not to be frightened and not to listen to those voices. I tried but failed. I shared with my friends they thought I was making it all up and trying to frighten them by narrating ghost stories. As a…

After a gruelling two years of the COVID pandemic, medical teachers from the Grant Medical college in JJ Hospital, Mumbai, went on strike starting January 5th. For over two months, they demanded regularisation of their services and the implementation of the 7th pay commission, which would mean standardised salaries and timely promotions. The situation in medical colleges and hospitals that are run by the Maharashtra government point to discrepancies in budget allocation and implementation for medical colleges, when other central and BMC run hospitals provide better working conditions for medical practitioners and teachers.  The working conditions coupled with the depleting…