Delhi AIIMS Puts Four-Month-old Baby With Hole in Heart in Waiting, Asks to Come in 2023 For Surgery
AIIMS had previously highlighted that there was a large waiting line for heart surgeries at the hospital.
A four-month-old baby with a hole in the heart is on the waiting list of patients at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in Delhi to get a surgery. The infant who was taken to hospital last week for urgent surgery was asked to come back after five years in 2023. AIIMS had previously highlighted that there was a large waiting line for heart surgeries at the hospital. Other AIIMS hospital in the country cannot change the condition either.
Other than the one in Delhi there are six more AIIMS in the country. In 2012, the six regional AIIMS were opened in Patna, Bhopal, Raipur, Jodhpur, Rishikesh and Bhubaneswar.
Talking to The New Indian Express, the girl's father Ram Kishore of Bageshwar district in Uttarakhand said, "I am a poor man and I don’t have money to afford a cardiac surgery in a private hospital, but now I am helpless. To save my life (his daughter) I need to turn to some other hospital even if I need to borrow money." A senior official in the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry said there were shortages of faculty resources and infrastructure at these hospitals.
Health Minister JP Nadda had highlighted the apathy of AIIMS hospitals in the country last year while talking in the Lok Sabha. Even when the existing hospitals are not functioning in its full capacity, 13 more will sprout across the nation with two in Jammu and Kashmir and each in Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Punjab.
A senior doctor at AIIMS in Rishikesh said, "The government had hoped that those needing super specialist healthcare would benefit from these centres but that has not happened. There are two reasons: one, the new AIIMS don't have even half the 305 faculty strength and the pace of providing proper infrastructure, support staff and required equipment has been too slow."
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 17, 2018 05:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).