NEW DELHI: Prominent hospitals across the city including Safdarjung, AIIMS, Lok Nayak Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia (RML), and Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) are facing an acute shortage of machines like CT, MRI, and mammography leading to a delay in conducting tests on patients coming for treatment.
This is at a time when the city is reeling under the shock of the third wave of Covid-19 and the focus is on the city’s health care system.
According to the doctors working at the Safdarjung Hospital, two Computed Tomography (CT) machines have not been working for the last two years and an MRI machine for more than six months.“Because of this, no CT-guided vertebral bone biopsy or lung biopsies have been done for patients for more than one and a half years,” said a doctor, choosing to remain anonymous.
According to sources, a company wanted to donate an MRI machine to the Safdarjung Hospital, but the health ministry has not cleared the paperwork yet. The sources added that the machines have not been procured as the hospital administration has been waiting to get machines made under the Make in India programme for a long time now.
Along with this, a mammography machine has also not been working at the Safdarjung Hospital for the last two years due to which, patients with breast cancer have to get a test done from outside the hospital. Along with this, a few ultrasound machines have also been lying defective for more than 20 years resulting in long queues of patients including pregnant women to get tests done.
A similar situation was observed at other government hospitals. According to the doctors working at the Lok Nayak hospital, a fluoroscopy machine has not been working for almost a year. At the GTB, there is no MRI machine and patients have to go to other hospitals and testing labs to get an MRI test done. At the RML, one CT and one MRI have been non-functional for a long time, said the resident doctors under anonymity.
The CT scan machine at the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya Hospital has been lying defective for the last 20 days. Because of this, children coming to the emergency ward are sent outside in an ambulance for the CT scan. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Gamma Knife machine has not been made functional despite being highlighted in the news two months back. This machine is used in treating all those patients who are undergoing brain tumour surgery.