NEW DELHI: Asif Haidary carried multiple documents and moved from one corridor to another at AIIMS, desperately seeking admission for his five-week-old baby suffering from neurological complications. He failed to get a bed or fetch an immediate OPD date even after visiting the emergency twice.
“Everyone I am talking to is saying, beds are full and nothing is available. I don’t know where to go, whom to approach,” said Asif from Gorakhpur. A premier national institute like AIIMS was almost shut for a year and-a-half due to Covid-19, which has resulted in a longer waiting list, said a senior doctor.
“Many patients are getting operated in other set-ups while some have died waiting for admission. Our beds are choked with old injury cases admitted for many months. There are many centres such as plastic surgeries and mother and child blocks that are lying unutilised,” said the expert.
He also added, “Services are remaining grossly unutilised. We could have treated multiple patients. Training of residents is also getting affected, they hardly had any surgical exposure. The faculties are seating idle. Nobody is to be blamed for this, though.”Dr Deepak Gupta, professor in the neurology department, said that the occupancy for neurosurgical cases is full.
Everyday, the department is admitting 8-10 neurosurgery patients and doing 10-15 surgeries across six theatres which include, routine, elective and emergency. Daily, they are doing two-three head injury and trauma surgeries, he added.
“Number of accidents remained the same as pre-covid times. Routine elective admissions got badly affected. In pre-Covid period we were admitting more, the reason being trauma centre was open and almost 80-90 neurosurgical patients of trauma were admitted there,” Gupta added.
“The number of elective neurosurgery got affected although the sicker ones get priority. Earlier we had nine operation tables and now we have only six of them. The number of beds are also restricted as we have less the 100,” he stated.