AIIMS gets back to work

NEW DELHI, February 25: Patients began trickling into the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Thursday as it reopened afte...

NEW DELHI, February 25: Patients began trickling into the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Thursday as it reopened after a 16-day strike by faculty members. The thalassaemia day-care section of the main hospital was full even on the first day after the strike.

Patients from two-year-old toddlers to 48-year-old Sunil Grover were there waiting for their turn to receive blood. Grover, who usually gets two units of blood every 20 days, had been asked to come on February 9, when the strike began. He then received his supply from a private clinic after paying Rs 800. “My haemoglobin count had gone down. It has been 6.6 for the past one week (while the normal is 13) and I could barely walk. As there seemed to be no end to the strike, I was thinking of going to a private clinic again,” he said.

Abhiskhek, 10, whose lips and face are pale, has been waiting one week to get his transfusion. Waiting their turn in the queue, his father said the boy was pale because the transfusion had been delayed by the strike.

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Around 70 patients, including 12 medico-legal cases, were registered till noon in the emergency section of the hospital, while there were just a handful of people in the out-patient department.

Hospital spokesman B.K. Dash said it would take another couple of days for people to realise that the institute had reopened. There were around 400 patients in the hospital, he said.

Resident doctors said very few new admissions were being made as doctors were not sure if they would have to resume their strike after Thursday.

Faculty Association member Bir Singh said that their general body will take a decision on the strike after the court hearing on Monday. Till then we will wait and watch. Asked if they are working, he said the faculty will not go back on its word. Everything is back to normal at the hospital, he said.