Maharashtra to open OSC center at Cama and Albless Hospital, Mumbai

To ensure a safer and more comfortable environment for survivors of gender-based violence, Mumbai is set to get its first one-stop-crisis (OSC) centre inside a women’s hospital at Cama and Albless Hospital. Established under Centre’s Nirbhaya Fund, OSC centres in crowded hospitals are often avoided by women survivors fearing stigma.

“When a woman is subjected to abuse, she is traumatised. In such a situation, she feels more secure in less crowded areas, amid other women. This is why Cama Hospital, which is dedicated only to women care, has been selected,” said superintendent Dr Tushar Palve. “It will be the first such centre in Mumbai to be started in a women’s hospital,” he added. The project is under Mumbai City collector Rajiv Nivatkar who has played a pivotal role in taking the initiative.

The construction work for the OSC centre on the ground floor of Cama hospital has already begun. The centre is expected to start in the next six months and will have five beds that will be run in association with an NGO who will appoint qualified counsellors and lawyers to assist the survivors in distress. With this, it will be the third OSC centre in Mumbai. In 2019, the Union Women and Child Development minister inaugurated the state’s most expensive OSC at Parel’s KEM hospital. Later, the second one started at Jogeshwari Trauma centre that caters to Mumbai sub-urban areas. At present, the state has 37 OSC centres with an aim to provide a single point of contact for medical, legal, social, and psychological aid to women facing sexual and domestic abuse in each district across the country.

As The Indian Express reported earlier, due to low referrals and official apathy, the centres are not utilised to maximum. Data showed that per 110 registered rape cases, on an average annually, only one is referred to OSCs in Mumbai. Between 2020 and 2021, the city reported a total of 1,655 rape cases. Of these, just 16 or one per cent were attended to at the city’s two OSCs, showed RTI applications.

Taking note of it, last year, the WCD held several internal meetings where district-wise data were analysed. “The data showed that OSCs in rural areas were performing better than the ones in cities. We also noticed that in OSCs that are located inside women’s shelters or women’s hospitals (like Amravati), more women approached the centres for help,” said a senior officer from WCD.

With this, the decision to start Mumbai’s third OSC in Cama Hospital was taken. An officer also outlined departmental disputes between the staffers of BMC and the government-run WCD that further cripples the centres.

The Indian Express had reported about similar disputes where the 1,500 bedded KEM hospital refused to provide the required number of beds to its OSC. Despite repeated requests from Sneha NGO that maintains the centre, the OSC runs with just one bed in violation of the guidelines that mandates of having a minimum five beds.

“The two hospitals in Mumbai (KEM and Jogeshwari trauma centre) are under BMC who have given us the place to set up OSC. There have been several issues of lack of coordination and communication. With the start of the centre in Cama which is a government-run hospital, we are hoping that we would be able to address such issues,” said the officer. The Indian Express