Operating theatre at AIIMS closed for six months

At a time when the Capital’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is reeling under a weighty burden of patients while trying to provide optimum healthcare services, one of its operation theatres has been shut for more than six months. 

The orthopaedics OT is closed for patients as it is purportedly being refurbished, but sources at the institute alleged that the project file is just moving from one place to another and the administration seems to have turned a blind eye.

So, orthopaedic patients are undergoing surgery at the dental operation theatre which is creating additional trouble and inconvenience for doctors in preparing the entire setup for bone surgeries, the sources claimed. 

But the orthopaedics OT is just adjacent to the OPD and patients did not have to  travel a large distance for operations, they said. That has changed now. 

Mail Today visited the closed operation theatre and the entire area was abandoned and covered in dust. The OT door was closed with defunct wires and a plastic bag loaded with garbage swinging from the roof. 

A senior doctor, on the condition of anonymity, told Mail Today: ‘Nearly 20-25 ortho surgeries are conducted in a day and since the OT has been shut down it is causing us a lot of inconvenience. The administration’s plan is to create a “modular OT” but for this planning and implementation should be strong. By this time, the modular OT should have been functional. Our doctors, nurses and staff had to really toil to place the entire setup for orthopaedics OT in dental OT.’

But an orthopaedic operating theatre has been shut for six months awaiting refurbishment 

AIIMS, being the country’s premier medical institute, receives more than 10,000 patients every day and the waiting list for surgeries is long. 

‘As of now, the orthopaedic unit has a waiting list of patients, who have to undergo knee operations, from three months up to one year,’ said a senior doctor. 

On an average, the department sees nearly 1,000 patients in its OPD daily, he added. 

‘The new modular OT will take at least three to four months to start. I understand there must be some problem to patients and doctors as well, but it is just for a little time. We are trying our best as the structure for modular OT comes from abroad. Once we get it, it will be placed and the advanced OT would be started,’ Dr Randeep Guleria, director of AIIMS, told Mail Today. 

The orthopaedic surgeries are being conducted at the dental OT which is well equipped and patients are not suffering, he said. 

The modular OT has stainless walls and keeps away infections. Therefore, the AIIMS administration has planned such facilities for the new surgery division too. 

The number of surgeries conducted at the institute is going up every year and because of increased number of patients, AIIMS is now looking for expansion and newer centres are coming up, such as burns and plastic surgery department, surgery block, OPD block, emergency block, mother and child block and geriatric block. 

‘It is too late now. Around eight months back, work was started to reconstruct it, but within a month everything stopped. Not even a single construction work has been done till date,’ said a doctor,  adding that if such a setup was prepared in a private hospital, it would not have taken more than three months. 

Doctors say that because government healthcare institutions are ailing patients are shifting towards private hospitals where they face instances of medical negligence and overcharging.