Govt plans to slash calories for patients

HYDERABAD: Close on the heels of the announcement about setting up hospital development societies, the government plans to slash the amount it spends on patients for meeting their dietary requirements. The move, however, is likely to cheer hospital food contractors. A proposal to this effect is learnt to be in active consideration by the government.The government now spends Rs 15 per day for an in-patient at a teaching general hospital towards dietary requirements. Of this, it plans to pay Rs 2 to food contractors, who run hospital kitchens as service and maintenance charges. If the proposal is implemented, patients in teaching general hospitals, who already get a raw deal on nutritional value of food supplied, will have to settle for a diet that will cut nutrition by 900 calories. At present, the diet provided under the current budget, including breakfast, lunch and dinner, meets the mandated nutritional requirement of 2,100 calories and about 70 grams of protein, at least 'on paper'. 'In practice', however, it is not possible for contractors to provide a diet with optimum nutritional value at Rs 15 a day, as the rates were fixed in 1999 and have not been revised though market prices of all food items rose subsequently. Moreover, with no maintenance and service charges provided, the contractor, usually a business man in most cases, have not been supplying a diet with prescribed nutritional value in order to cut cost, health department sources said. However, by paying contractors without increase the budget and instead cutting into the meagre allocation for nutrition, the government will not help the patients' cause. All the proposal is expected to do is to make official service charges,what contractors now take by cutting on calorific value. Under the plan prepared by the state diet committee, calorific value per day for a normal diet will be reduced from the current 2,000-2,100 calories to 1,200-1,300 calories. However, the proposal comes a blessing in disguise to patients at the AP Vaidya Vidhana Parishad hospitals. Instead of the current one meal per day, consisting of bread and milk, they will get three full meals. Another relief is that the new plan provides for therapeutic diet for patients suffering from diabetes, renal failure, cardiac complaints, tuberculosis and those admitted at intensive care units at Rs 25 per patient per day.