NEFIS demands robust healthcare facilities
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, May 19 2021: Stating that the rising rate of deaths of Covid patients is due to lack of adequate health infrastructure in the state, North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) demanded the government to ensure quality healthcare facilities to all and make immediate and adequate provision of oxygen to the patients suffering from Covid-19 and other diseases.

In a release, NEFIS member Thokchom Yaiphalembi Chanu said that the present crisis has laid bare the pathetic health infrastructure in the state.

While noting that premier government hospitals are already in a dire state to cope with the rising number of Covid patients, it also contended that patients are dying due to lack of adequate health infrastructure.

"Amid such a critical juncture, private hospitals and ambulance service providers are taking undue advantage and charging huge amount.

Moreover, due to lack of adequate infrastructure in public hospitals, people are simply forced to rely on private healthcare institutions," it added.

The Forum further remarked that the current problem is emblematic of the way in which the hospitals of the state have been rendered decrepit due to conscious attempts at under-funding them and thereby promoting privatisation of healthcare services in the state.

Instead of private health initiatives, the need of the hour is for the government to provide health facilities to all, NEFIS stressed and also demanded reopening of OPD services in all the government hospitals so as to provide treatment to non-Covid patients.

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