With the company responsible for maintenance of the Computer-assisted Tomography (CT) scan machine of associated hospital of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) dithering from repairing the important radio diagnostic machine it is clear now that the painful wait of patients for the CT scan in the biggest hospital of the state would be much longer than expected.
The machine is non functional since December 14 last year causing problems to the patients who now have to depend on the costly private hospitals and clinics. The health directorate had released a budget of Rs 12.80 lakh for repair of the machine last week. The company responsible for maintenance of the machine started on the work but it is learnt that the company is now not interested to complete the task assigned.
“The health department owed about Rs 18 lakh to the company and it has released only 12 lakh to it. The company now wants to recover its remaining dues and end the contract. Further the machine is very old and should be replaced by a new one,’’ said one of an employee of radiology department. When contacted the Medical Superintendent (MS) of the associated hospital of GDMC, Dr K K Tamta told The Pioneer that some parts of the machines are required to be brought from outside. He claimed that the machine would be repaired within two to three days.
Budget is said to be the major problem which is coming in the way of repair of the machine. Initially the state health department refused to provide budget on the plea that the machine is now part of the medical college which comes under the medical education department. The Principal of the medical college had claimed that the budget would be released for repair of CT scan machine but the college eventually backed out from its declaration to release the budget. After the plight of patients was highlighted in the newspapers the health department released some budget for the repair. The company started the work but now it appears that it no longer is interested in the maintenance contract of the aging error prone machine.
The machine was installed in the erstwhile Doon hospital in the year 2004. The manufacturer of the machine ‘Siemens International’ also holds the maintenance contract of the machine.