Pune civic body offers help to private practitioners to restart clinics for easing patient burden on hospitals

She told the medical practitioners that they will get all possible help for them to restart their clinics and smooth operations thereafter. “Comorbid is my concern. They are facing problems as you as family doctors have closed operations. Regular patients are suffering,” Agarwal said.

Once private clinics begin operations, the additional municipal commissioner said they can also refer suspected coronavirus cases to PMC hospitals for testing and treatment.

“You are the backbone of the medical service. You can give medicine to patients as per their need and refer suspected cases to us,” she said.

Private practitioners, on the other hand, have demanded safety equipment and medicines for patients to open their clinics. The PMC has assured universal safety equipment to them, medicines for symptomatic treatment of flu, regular disinfection of the clinic and some financial support if they run the out-patient department for free.

“If private practitioners join the PMC as volunteers at various quarantine and swab collection centres, then the civic body will also think of providing them with remuneration,” Agarwal said.

State Cooperative Commissioner Anil Kawade, one of the IAS officers pressed into checking the pandemic in the city, said private practitioners running their clinics at Dharavi in Mumbai has led to effective results.

“We need to implement the best practices of other cities to contain the disease in our area,” he said.

On the issue of social distancing not being possible at small clinics, Agarwal said the PMC can provide mobile clinics for some hours, which could be used for screening and treatment.

“The existing mobile clinics have been able to detect 170 COVID-19 cases, meaning that they have done good work,” she said, adding that private practitioners can declare their timings, which the PMC can publish on its website. Last but not least, she added that police and ward officers will help clinics run without any hassle.