Mumbai: The healthcare crisis continues at Shatabdi Hospital in Govandi, where the ICU has remained non-functional since February 2025 due to a severe shortage of doctors. Despite being a key public healthcare facility for the densely populated eastern suburbs of Mumbai, the hospital is unable to provide critical care services, leaving patients in distress.
Shatabdi Hospital has a total capacity of 210 beds, which includes 10 ICU beds and 10 MICU beds. However, the ICU remains shut, and the absence of on-duty doctors has forced the hospital to turn away patients in need of urgent medical attention.
For thousands of residents from nearby slum areas such as Bainganwadi, Shivaji Nagar, Govandi, Mankhurd, and Trombay, Shatabdi Hospital is the only accessible BMC-run medical facility. On average, 600 to 700 patients visit its Outpatient Department (OPD) daily, many of whom require further medical intervention or hospital admission.
Yet, for the past several months, patients have been forced to buy medicines from private chemists due to frequent stockouts at the hospital. Many patients interviewed by The Free Press Journal said they rarely receive all prescribed medicines at the facility and are often required to purchase at least one or two, if not all, from outside.
In a tragic case in April 2025, a patient named Avinash Shirgaonkar died after being denied even a basic catheterisation procedure for acute urinary retention. With the ICU non-functional and no doctors available, the delay in treatment severely worsened his condition before he could be shifted to another hospital.
Social worker Faiyaz Shaikh, associated with the Govandi Resident Welfare Association (GRWA), highlighted that the hospital has developed a routine of referring patients to other civic or state-run facilities, even those suffering from relatively minor conditions like elevated blood pressure. He also stated that patients were frequently asked to undergo CT or MRI scans at private diagnostic centres, despite a CT scan machine being available at the hospital under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.
Several such incidents point to the hospital’s deteriorating infrastructure and administrative neglect, which have continued to compromise the safety and care of patients in the area.
