AIIMS-Patna under fire, HC calls for status details

Mangalore Today News Network

Mar 25, 2017: The Patna high court has asked the AIIMS–Patna administration and the Union health ministry to respond to a petition seeking round-the-clock emergency service, blood bank and other necessary infrastructure for treatment of patients at health facility.

A division bench of chief justice Rajendra Menon and justice Sudhir Singh sought the replies by the next date of hearing, which it fixed after two weeks.

Petitioner Devika Biswas had said that All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-Patna, which was established in 2012, needed to be fully equipped to render meaningful service to the people of Bihar and nearby states.

Petitioner’s counsel Vikas Kumar Pankaj said without emergency services and blood bank, the hospital at present was like a “body without a soul.”

The court also clubbed petition with another, which too had pleaded for improvement in services of on AIIMS–Patna.

The other petition, filed by Mukeshwar Dayal, had claimed that AIIMS-Patna rendered no emergency services and lacked a proper blood bank.

It also said the health facility could not undertake autopsy, had no MRI facility and students lacked laboratories and equipment to work with.

He had also claimed that the hospital lacked basic teaching facilities and cadavers for dissection in its anatomy department. Besides, there were no laboratory facilities in departments of pathology, pharmacology, preventive and social medicine, microbiology, forensic medicine and toxicology (FMT), community medicine and family medicine. It also pointed to lack of fully functional trauma centre and ICU as also super specialty departments for neurology, gasteroenterology and nephrology, due which the very purpose of starting the hospital had been lost.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) SD Sanjay represented the Union health ministry in the court, while Binay Kumar Pandey appeared for AIIMS-Patna.