The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its nod for setting up of an AIIMS-like institute in Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh with an outlay of Rs 1,350 crore, taking the total number of such mega projects being constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Surakhsa Yojna (PMSSY) to 20. These are modeled on the lines of AIIMS in Delhi.
Interestingly, the Cabinet approval comes three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the AIIMS project last October at Bilaspur, the native town of Union Health Minister JP Nadda.
The 750-bed AIIMS at Bilaspur, to be constructed on a 205-acre-plot, will have a medical college with an intake capacity of 100 seats and a nursing college with 60 seats, 20 specialty and super specialty departments including 15 operation theatres proposed to be completed in 48 months.
The AIIMS Bilaspur is the latest in the list. The Modi Government has already sanctioned three AIIMS in Nagpur (Maharashtra), Kalyani (West Bengal) and Mangalagiri in Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) in 2015, two at Bathinda and Gorakhpur in 2016 and an AIIMS in Kamrup (Assam) with an aim to ensure better health services to the local population. Work at the AIIMS-like institute in Rae Bareily in Uttar Pradesh is under progress.
The Government has also announced setting up AIIMS-like institutes in Jammu & Kashmir (two projects), Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and in Gujarat. “These will be constructed under the PMSSY and are yet to be approved from the Cabinet,” a senior Health Ministry official said.
However, while the Government is in the spree of approving new AIIMS project, the six AIIMS-like institutes at Rishikesh, Bhubhneshwar, Bhopal, Jodhpur, Raipur and Patna, sanctioned way back in 2005 in the first phase of the PMSSY, are yet to become fully operational and start delivering on the health front for the local people.
A Parliamentary panel too in its report recently slammed the Government for failing to fully operate the six AIIMS-like institutes. It attributed the delay to vacant faculty posts, inadequate and incomplete development of infrastructure, number of functioning departments quite less compared to sanctioned ones, lack of quality teaching, non-functional blood bank and emergency and casualty services, lack of pathology, pharmacology services etc.
“Building infrastructure without the appropriate facilities would yield no gains in healthcare facilities of the country. The Committee is, therefore, of the firm view that efforts need to be made in filling up vacant posts especially faculty posts so as to maintain standard of teaching at the six functional AIIMS outside Delhi,” said the panel, headed by Rajya Sabha member Ram Gopal Yadav.
Also, the provisions of emergency services, blood bank, pathology labs need to be put in place on a priority basis. The Committee would also like to reiterate that regular monitoring of the work done under PMSSY needs to be done in order to ensure completion of projects on time.
It said that out of 305 sanctioned faculty posts at each of these AIIMS, not even half were filled in any of these Institutes. “As regards the non-faculty posts, the no of posts filled on regular basis is pathetically poor. At Jodhpur and Rishikesh, out of sanctioned strength of 3776, no regular posts are filled and contractual arrangements have been done by filling 98 and 174 posts, respectively,” the panel noted.