E-Paper
State health department shuts down 157 hospitals for violating norms
A total of 37,038 hospitals were inspected and raided across the state, as part of the crash drive and 6,742 were found to be not following the norms and were non compliant
As many as 157 hospitals and nursing homes from the state have been shut down by state health department for violating medical termination of pregnancy and pre-natal diagnostic techniques (PNDT) norms in 2018. This comes after 23 months of finding multiple female foetuses were found in Sangli’s Mhaisal village.
The state health department choose to conduct a crash drive after finding 19 female foetuses wrapped in a blue polythene bag, thrown by the roadside in Sangli district in March 2017. A total of 37,038 hospitals were inspected and raided across the state, as part of the crash drive and 6,742 were found to be not following the norms and were non compliant.
Giving more details about the same, Dr Archana Patil, state’s joint director for health services and head of Family welfare bureau said, “ What happened in Sangli’s Mhaisal village is highly condemnable. Taking cognisance of the same, we immediately decided to conduct a surprise raid and inspected more than 37,000 hospitals and nursing homes across Maharashtra. We found out that of the total number of hospitals we raided, 6,742 were non-compliant and were not following certain norms. However, after serving notices to all these, we conducted a re-inspection in mid 2018 where we found out that almost 90 percent of them had started following the legalities but there were certain centres who still were found out to have been lackadaisical in their attitude and continued to follow their old activities.”
Explaining the illegalities, Patil said, “We found out that majority of the centres out of 6,742 were found to have violated the Maharashtra pollution control board (MPCB) norms and lacked registration certificates and documents from the MPCB department. The total centres that lacked MPCB documents were 2,084 while 1,329 were found to lack registration under Bombay Nursing Home registration act (BNA) which is mandatory for every centre,” she said.
Also, around 536 lacked record and had incomplete records of abortions conducted by them and at least 100 had unqualified staff. All these are a threat to public health and patients who choose to seek treatment or intervention at such centres, she said.
On actions that state followed after finding out the illegalities in these many centres across the state, Patil said, “We had served noticed to all the 6742 centres as they were found to have violated the norms. After the three months crash drive that was conducted from March in 2017 we chose to reinspect the same centres again in 2018 in mid July and found out that around 6308 clinical establishments took cognisance of the notices served to them. However there were certain who still continued their ‘illegal ways’ and hence we were forced to shut down around 157 hospitals and 196 others were penalised. We also filed an FIR against 43 centres for being involved in illegal activities.”
The state also cancelled the registration for five MTP centres and filed two cases in the court, revealed Patil. She also claimed that this was the biggest crash drive which the state conducted recently after the unfortunate incident. Of the 37068 centres (hospitals/nursing homes) around 6742 were found to have violated the MTP act.The crash drive was conducted in 2017 (march 15 to may 31) . All the 6742 were served notices and issued warning letters.
Actions taken by the state against the illegal centres in 2018
157 nursing homes/ hospitals/ MP centres shut
196 penalised
19 warned
43 FIR filed
