The government, it seems, is all set to miss the deadline for setting up six AIIMS-like institutes once again. More that six years after the health ministry decided to set up the institutes under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY), Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday admitted that out of six of them, government is making efforts to start “four” medical colleges in 2012.
Even the appointment of directors to these institutes is yet to be made. Dr Azad said that only two of the appointed directors agreed to join (Patna and Bhopal). Since, the other four refused to go to different places, the appointment process for the remaining four would take place by the end of March or early April.
The government had in 2006 decided to set up one institute each in the states of Bihar (Patna), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal), Orissa (Bhubaneswar), Rajasthan (Jodhpur), Chhattisgarh (Raipur) and Uttarakhand (Rishikesh) after the initial studies found that these places were adding heavily to the workload at the New Delhi-based premier institute — AIIMS. The proposal had envisaged a 850-bed hospital, four operation theatres, a diagnostic unit equipped with cutting-edge equipment, outpatient departments and facilities to provide healthcare in 39 speciality/super-speciality disciplines in each institute.
It was decided that medical college would provide undergraduate, PG and doctoral courses.
While, the necessary funds were approved for the Phase I sites in 2004-2005, the deadline of 2008 could not be met. The government has then extended the deadline by two years. More than four years after, the struggle to meet the deadline for completing the work continues.
The delay also came at a heavy price. Initially, the approximate expenditure was `280 crores for each institute, but “in March 2006, financial projections were made and it was set at `330 crores each. Officials had blamed poor response of developers to their tenders as a major cause of the setback.