Financial difficulties hinder aid to poor patients

Although the number of needy patients runs into thousands, the average number of patients helped with small amounts comes to only about 250.The procedure for disbursing financial assistance is cumbersome: a patient must first be certified as needy by the head of the department or unit consultant; thereafter the case goes to the Medical Superintendent and if he approves, a sum is released.

"It is difficult to decide who needs help the most," says Dr D Behera, joint medical superintendent. "Generally we get 10 to 15 applications per day seeking help for buying medicines but it is not possible to consider all. We still try to help everybody and distribute as much as we can among the needy."

According to a PGI pharmacist: "Suppose a patient needs medicine worth Rs 5,000 … we give him medicine for three days. We give medicines up to Rs 1,500 generally but sometimes more can be sanctioned. For instance, recently we gave medicines worth Rs 5,000 to a kidney transplant patient."Seva Bharati is another saviour for those desperately in need of un-affordable medicines, but this organisation too functions on a shoestring budget.

"We would like to be able to help every poor patient coming to us, especially those whom the doctors recommend, but limited resources mean that we can only do so much. Some people donate medicines, other give cash to enable us to purchase drugs from the chemists we try to stretch our funds to the maximum but now and again we go `broke’ and have to refer needy patients to other social organisations such as the Red Cross and Sahayta," says Sewa Bharti volunteer R P Sharma.

The good news is that the Union Health Ministry may pump Rs 10 lakh into the Poor Patients’ Fund via its National Assistance Fund.