55 teachers, no emergency, no blood bank, no autopsy

PATNA : Teaching work in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Patna remained suspended for the second day on Wednesday as its 400-odd students continued to boycott their classes.
The students are agitating against, among other things, lack of basic infrastructure and shortage of teachers in the central medical institute. They met institute director Dr G K Singh on Wednesday, but their talks proved futile as they refused to withdraw their stir till a deadline is fixed for redressal of their grievances.
Dr Singh admitted the AIIMS-Patna lacks adequate floor space and adequate number of faculty members. "But these problems have not reached such a point of criticality that the students need to resort to an agitation. These problems are not hampering their studies," he told TOI.
The issues of floor space and faculty require the intervention of the Union health ministry for their solution. "As many as 195 faculty recruitments were made in February this year. However, the institute body (IB) comprising members from across India red-flagged it on the flimsy ground that the upper age limit was extended up to 58 years without taking its permission. It was done only after the ministry gave its go-ahead and we went to the IB for post-facto approval like a couple of other AIIMSs did," the AIIMS-Patna director said.
He also admitted that the construction work of four floors of OPD and four blocks of IPD (in-patient department) should have been completed by now. "But it is a project of the Union ministry, and its execution is monitored by its own engineers in which the director has hardly any say," Dr Singh explained.
The OPD and IPD are currently functioning from the Ayush building of the hospital. The OPD facility began in 2013 while the IPD in 2015.
Against the sanctioned strength of over 300-odd teachers, the agitating students said, there are only 55 teachers. "There's acute shortage of teachers in crucial departments like medicine, ophthalmology ENT, psychiatry, dermatology, forensic medicine and toxicology as well as pharmacology. We are not given proper clinical training as the limited faculty is busy with OPD and admitted patients," a student said, preferring anonymity.
The students also rue that a premier institute like AIIMS-Patna does not have emergency and trauma care facilities. A blood bank is still in the process of becoming functional. "First of the five batches of AIIMS-Patna will pass out this year. How will they do internship here without emergency facility?" asks their charter of demands.
Worse, they say, they don't have proper labs. "AIIMS-Patna does not have pathology, pharmacology and microbiology labs. What are we going to learn and where?" a second-year student asked and lamented even autopsy is not done in the institute, which further hampers their studies.