New Delhi: Four years since a Supreme Court order mandated night-shelters for outstation patients and attendants at AIIMS, the poor from far-off places jostle for living space on pavements outside the country’s top referral hospital, shivering in the night chill with temperatures plunging below five degrees Celsius.
AIIMS caters to about 10,000 patients daily, of whom some 800 stay on for follow-up treatment. There’s space for barely 200 such patients and their attendants in night-shelters at AIIMS. Three dharamshalas with 500 beds cater to patients and their attendants of both AIIMS and the Safdarjung Hospital across the road. It’s a scramble to get a place to stay the night, for attendants of poor patients admitted, and those not admitted but undergoing treatment.
Wednesday night, as the mercury plummeted to 5.2C, patients and caregivers swarmed outside the hospital, trying all means — blankets given in charity, small fires no matter how unhealthy, cheap plastic sheets for cover — to beat the chill, The Times of India reported.
The bus stand outside AIIMS is where little Sunny, with a hole in his heart, has found shelter for two weeks with his parents. His mother Kaushalya holds the gasping 2-year-old close, shielding him from the icy winds. “He’s breathless and coughs. Patna doctors referred him to AIIMS saying he needs an emergency surgery,” she says. After two weeks of staying in the open, battling the elements and getting their child treated, the family will return to hometown Muzzafarpur. They return in April, when the doctors have slated his surgery.
Union health minister J P Nadda visited the institute Thursday, saying his department will ensure none has to sleep on the pavements in the bitter cold. A story in this paper on the pitiable condition of patients and relatives braving the biting cold in wait for a bed in AIIMS had drawn an anguished reaction from the SC in January 2012 that then asked Delhi government to set up a night-shelter inside or near the hospital for outstation patients. Little has changed.
Suffering from oral cancer, Mahender, after a surgery has stayed nearby two months now receiving chemotherapy. All praise for AIIMS doctors, he says it’s crucial to stay nearby. “In case of an emergency, I can rush to the hospital. Back home in Agra, there is no such facility.”
“In the three years since the SC’s order (2012), capacity at the night shelters have been augmented,” says Dr Deepak Agarwal of AIIMS. He cautions “there is a limit” to providing accommodation, blaming states’ failure to provide key health services that forces people to travel to AIIMS.
AIIMS is located in one of the city’s most polluted sections. One would imagine Rajesh Kumar, a severe asthmatic, would avoid staying in the hospital’s vicinity. No such luck. “I have severe asthma and hypertension. In UP’s Kasganj where I live, there’s not sufficient oxygen cylinders. Private ones charge about Rs 2,000 per day for the facility. At AIIMS, it’s readily available in an emergency,” he said. So Kumar has lived by the roadside outside AIIMS, and even huddles with others around a fire to stay warm, further damning his asthmatic condition. Like many others around him, he has little choice.
Patients like Raju Gautam have made AIIMS their second home. They also work there to earn a living. “I came to AIIMS three years ago for eardrum repair which required six surgeries. Because I did not have money to travel back and forth so many times from my hometown to the hospital, I stayed on. I managed to find a job with the local pharmacies for loading and the unloading of medicines,” says Gautam.