Hyderabad: While the number of mental illness patients from across Telangana treated at the Institute of Mental Health at Erragadda in the city has increased to 1.3 lakh per year, the state government spends only Rs 3.6 crore per annum on the tertiary hospital. These funds are used not only for dietary charges of in-patients, medicines, sanitation, diagnosis and repairs, but also for wages of the employees.
Only Rs 52 is spent on every in-patient’s diet each day though NHRC guidelines have specified that the nutritive value of food should be around 3,000 kilo calories for men and 2,500 kilo calories for women.
In 2010, around Rs 28 was spent on each patient per day. Now, due to rising prices and inflation, hospital authorities have written to the government to increase the budget.
An RTI application filed by this correspondent with the IMH has revealed several facts pertaining to expenditure and patient treatment. Around Rs 41.53 lakh was spent on diet charges in the 2014-15 budget and around 4,112 in patients were treated in the hospital in 2015.
Ironically IMH has no EEG (Electro Encephalogram), the key equipment for a brain scan. IMH superintendent Dr V. Pramod said, “We have written to the government seeking a hike in budget and diet charges. We get the medicines separately from the central drug stores. Apart from that, we also spent Rs 15.9 lakh last year... We have all other required equipment except EEG. We didn’t purchase it as we don’t have a sanctioned post of technician.” Around 10 per cent of the patients are referred by the judiciary after police produce them in courts.
In reply to the RTI query, the IMH superintendent stated: “The most common psychiatric diseases reported are psychosis like schizophrenia, mania and alcohol related illness. We are equipped to treat all kinds of patients. For voluntary admissions, the patients require an attendant throughout the treatment period. For involuntary admissions, the patients are referred from courts with reception orders. The patients are also referred from jails. After treatment, patients will be discharged by the discharge committee of this hospital.” He added that only 70 per cent of manpower was currently available at the hospital.
Interestingly, the hospital has 600 beds but the current occupancy ratio is only 390. Earlier, the NHRC had found that the average occupancy ratio was around 45 per cent to 49 per cent. The average stay of in-patients is around two to three weeks.
