Promod Dogra
Mr Gupta, 70 years, is a retired government servant, residing at Gandhi Nagar, Jammu and has been suffering from liver problems for the last few years. He was unable to get proper diagnosis and treatment at Jammu and has been travelling to Delhi every few months for investigations, consultations and treatment, spending several days or weeks every time. On a couple of occasions he had to be rushed to Delhi in an intercity ambulance in an emergency condition. The ambulance trips were quite long, painful and traumatic both for him and the family. Unfortunately recently his granddaughter too fell ill, and was not responding to the treatment at Jammu. She needed to be rushed to Amritsar and admitted to Fortis Amritsar where she finally recovered. The family is suffering due to the lack of quality medical care at Jammu.
This is just one example but scores of families are travelling from all over Jammu region in search of quality medical care to nearbycities including Amritsar, Jalandhar, Chandigarh, Delhi and sometimes even as far as Mumbai. The need to transport patient to such centres results in loss of precious time for the already serious patients. Sometimes, this results in serious complications and on a few cases, could even lead to death due to lack of timely treatment. It’s also a big drain on the finances with intercity ambulances, lodging &boarding in big cities, and disruption of families resulting in added financial and mental stress. Many a time the patients have passed away in far off cities, longing to go to the city they belong to, to be near the loved ones during their last days, but simply couldn’t.
The Jammu city finally rejoiced when they got the news that two AIIMS were announced by Prime Minister for each of the two Capital cities of J&K, in 2015-16. But two years down the line, they are still waiting for this much needed facility to start taking shape. The land has been finalized at Vijaypur Jammu but it is still not acquired. The state government needs to act with greater urgency in this matter and make this long pending dream into reality.
Meanwhile other cities where AIIMS have been approved are progressing at their own pace in this regard. Nagpur has been striving to get this started at the earliest. At Nagour, it is expected that it’ll take further 2-3 years for the facility to be constructed and become operational. In the meantime, efforts are ongoing to setup a temporary AIIMS OPD at Nagpur, operating out of the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Nagpur premises. This will provide immediate relief to the local population in the form of better OPD facility and 50 seats in AIIMS entrance examination. Though efforts are ongoing to start it this year itself (session of 2017-18), but in the worst case, it’ll be operational in 2018-19 session.
The J&K Government needs to work with relevant ministries and AIIMS administration to approve a similar arrangement for Jammu. Government Medical College (GMC) Jammu facilities can be used to start AIIMS OPD and maybe start 50 seats AIIMS collage sharing the same premises. The infrastructure is available, need is very strong, what is needed now is the right push from government to make this a realty in the next few months. This will result in immediate OPD relief to local population. Also in the next 5 years, the local AIIMS doctors will start coming out from Jammu AIIMS and start serving the local population.
We urge the J&K Governmentto take this up seriously and converts this strong need into a reality and get a temporary AIIMS for Jammu from session of 2017-18 itself.
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