A state-of-the-art hospital for the poor
Published in "The Week"
by C. Sujit Chandra Kumar
The code for this operation could well have been Shanti-98. The
inauguration of the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS)
at Edapally near Kochi in Kerala, by Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee days after the Pokharan explosions, will facilitate a thousand
operations. The best part is that poor patients need not pay even
a paisa.
A project of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, the Rs 300-crore, multi-specialty
referral hospital will offer its services free for the needy and
charge a nominal fee from those who can afford it. Vajpayee also
inaugurated the first phase of a free housing project for the poor.
The running cost of the hospital, according to its administrators,
will be met by the ashram which has deposited a large endowment
for this purpose. "Even those who pay can have the satisfaction
that the money will be used to take care of more poor patients,"
says Dr. Prem Nair, medical director of AIMS, who left his job as
professor of medicine in the University of California after meeting
Mata Amritanandamayi in the US to join her ashram near Kollam.
It was the disciples of Amma--as Amritanandamayi is known--themselves
who handled much of the construction work and built the fabrication
and furniture while most of the medical equipment came from western
devotees. The unique, patient-friendly design had inputs from a
Delhi-based hospital architect besides other experts in Los Angeles,
Sacramento and Boston. "It will permit the patients to have
all the facilities within a given area, without having to wander
through the hospital looking for X-rays or laboratories,”
says Prem Nair.
In terms of equipment and infrastructure, the hospital is believed
to be as good as any hospital in the US or Europe. The hospital's
volumetric high speed CT scanner, for instance, has a host of functionalities
which standard CT scanners do not provide. It can even freeze a
moving image. The computer can reconstruct the body's internal images
which one cannot otherwise see. For instance, it will show an image
as if one is walking down the tunnel of the artery.
The operating rooms are seamless and each has its own climate control
system. The special air flow system allows the air to flow from
the top to the corners of the room so that there is no stagnant
air.
The hospital with 23 acres of land and six lakh sq. ft of usable
space now has 150 beds but the capacity will increase to nearly
a thousand in due course. Similarly, whereas it now has the heart
programme, digestive diseases programme, the chest diseases institute
and the kidney centre, the other specialties are expected to be
in place in the near future.
This is the math's second major project in the health care field,
the first being the hospice for the terminally ill cancer patients
in Mumbai. The next could be an AIDS hospital. "There is a
high incidence of AIDS in India but people don't want to know,"
says Prem Nair. If the plan takes shape, those affected with the
HIV virus will know where to go.
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