EAST ANSARI NAGAR CAMPUS AIIMS to get bigger, fitter to cure better
optimally, we have to go vertical while keeping the campus atmosphere. After all, this is a university, it’s not just a hospital. So the plan is to maintain the campus atmosphere, develop research and academic areas, and find space for our faculty in multi-storey apartments. The current faculty satisfaction is 14%, they are not getting a house. We have 20 houses, we have 400 professors,” said Dr Guleria.
There is equal focus on the seamless movement of vehicles and people, across campuses, using walkways, bicycle tracks, skywalks, e-bus and traffic lanes so that the hospital block is connected with the research and academics block, residences, convention centre, guest house, multilevel car parks and the subway station.
PAST IMPERFECT
Over the last decade, the AIIMS campus has started looking more like a busy train station than a university campus where doctors train and treat patients.
Patients start queuing up outside the hospital gates at 3am to visit the out-patient department (OPD), which opens at 9am. Some spend the night sleeping on the pavement outside to ensure they make it in time to get their prescriptions and medicines.
While pavements outside have been encroached by patients and their families, and enterprising hawkers selling food, pans, sheets and buckets needed to set up a temporary home, the campus inside is no less crowded, with a daily footfall of 40,000-50,000. Guards double up as ushers and traffic cops to keep the traffic moving and help patients and their families reach their desired destinations.
Vasant Kunj resident Atul Mathur, 23, who was at AIIMS on Wednesday to visit RING ROAD a friend in the private ward, said redevelopment is sorely overdue. “People are everywhere, no one seems to know where to go or what to do. I wonder how doctors work in these conditions. The staff and the patients deserve better,” said Mathur, who is doing his MBA in Ahmedabad.
Dr S Sampath Kumar, former chief of Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Centre at AIIMS, who joined the institute as a senior resident in 1969 and stayed till he superannuated in 2009, said the institute has changed a lot. “The change is more than anyone would have expected. With the number of patients going up exponentially, the workload on doctors has increased tremendously and most of them routinely work 12 hours a day. There’s no room to work, no room to walk. The hospital is so crowded that doctors need guards to part crowds for the doctors to walk through to reach the OPD room,” said Dr Kumar, who spent four decades in the AIIMS campus.
Setting up of the RP Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Centre, CTNS Centre and the International Rotary Cancer Hospital in 1985-86 and the JP Trauma Centre in 2006 in the campus took a load off the emergency ward and the main hospital, but within a decade, they were overflowing with patients too.
AIIMS also needs more beds, particularly in intensive care units (ICU). “AIIMS was created as a model institute for undergraduate and postgraduate training in medicine, research and patient care, but now, the conditions are not suitable to do anything. The existing medical facilities are outdated and the infrastructure cannot meet the demand, which has increased tenfold. We need vertical expansion because there is not enough space for the thousands of visitors each day,” said Dr MC Mishra, former AIIMS director, who joined the institute as a senior resident in 1980 and became the director of AIIMS’ JP Trauma Centre.
AYUSHMAN BHARAT INFLUX
At least 40% of the patients treated at AIIMS come from other states, with the number rapidly increasing since the launch of Ayushman Bharat, the government’s health insurance programme that provides ₹5 lakh hospitalisation cover to up to 100 million poor families, last September. “We are getting more patients from outside Delhi coming for treatment since the launch of Ayushman Bharat, from Bihar especially. They now know they are entitled to it, otherwise they could not afford it,” said Dr Guleria.
Dr Aarti Vij, professor of hospital administration at Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Centre, said, “Last month, a man from Bihar was running around collecting ₹1.5 lakh for his bypass surgery. He had no money. Then he got a message from his neighbour that there was a letter for him from the PM. They Whatsapped the letter to him, he went to the Ayushman Bharat booth and got the surgery done for free,” said .
Another young woman needed valvereplacement surgery but could not afford it. “Her family wasn’t ready to pay for her, but she got the ₹90,000-surgery done for free with her Prime Minister Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) card,” said Dr Vij.
As the number of patients grows, so will the hospital. “When you talk to these patients, you realise how the card (PM-JAY) and quality healthcare are game-changers for them, how it changes their whole life. Healthcare is central to all lives, we want to build an institute equipped to treat as many people as we can,” said Dr Guleria. EXISTING ZONING PROPOSED ZONING Graphic:
MANOJIT DATTA
DIAGRAM NOT TO SCALE. FOR REPRESENTATIONAL PURPOSE ONLY