01-26-2009, 05:34 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>PM to blame for reducing AIIMS to rubble</b>
pioneer.com
Sidharth Mishra
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been successfully operated upon for his heart ailment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). On Saturday morning when the Prime Minister was being operated upon by a team of surgeons from a private hospital of Mumbai,<b> AIIMS' leading light of open heart surgery Dr AK Bisoi was left twiddling his thumbs and sipping coffee in the cafeteria</b>.
<b>This was no small incident. Till a few years ago, the doctors at AIIMS were considered gods and even medics from world's best known medical schools were not allowed inside their sanctum sanctorum. But thanks to a bull inside the china shop called Anbumani Ramadoss, this unfortunate nation's incorrigible Health Minister, AIIMS today is a shadow of its glorious past</b>.
It's not that there has been a sudden loss of competence among its faculty members. But they have been totally demoralised and their morale blown to smithereens. In the first four years of his tenure Ramadoss had a running battle with venerable heart surgeon and director of the Institute Dr P Venugopal, who resisted the Minister's attack on Institute autonomy.
Despite the humiliation of being dismissed, Venegopal fought on and restored the dignity of the Institute and his own pride by getting the High Court to quash the Ministerial fiat.
For the years that Venugopal was at the Institute, the department of cardiovascular surgery remained the flagship department of the AIIMS. Then how within a year of Venugopal's superannuation did the institute get shorn of all its competence? It's not competence but petty politics at play. Bisoi, the inheritor of Venugopal's legacy, could not have been given the opportunity of winning accolades for successfully operating upon the Prime Minister.
<b>If the doctors from the AIIMS were not going to operate upon him, Dr Manmohan Singh would have at least saved the AIIMS faculty and doctors the embarrassment of playing second fiddle to outsiders on their home turf. After all Singh's predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to a private hospital in Mumbai to get his knee replaced.</b> The transplant surgeon was especially flown in from the United States to carry out the surgery.
<b>Dr Singh could also have gone to Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai for the surgery</b>. It would have saved an eminent and promising surgeon like Bisoi the embarrassment of being denied an entry into the Institute's operation theatre, which has been his home for the past two decades. The Prime Minister can afford to get himself admitted at the AIIMS and have doctors from Mumbai to operate on him but not all the patients at the Institute. They have to depend on a proletarian Bisoi than the highest tax-paying Dr Rama Kant Panda.
Though it may sound uncharitable to accuse a sick man of his follies, Dr Manmohan Singh certainly would be judged adversely for having first allowed Anbumani Ramadoss to run amok inside AIIMS and then do his own bit by adding insult to the injured pride of institute faculty. When he recovers, the Prime Minister must mull over if he has done justice to the hallowed centre of medical research and patient care. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
pioneer.com
Sidharth Mishra
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been successfully operated upon for his heart ailment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). On Saturday morning when the Prime Minister was being operated upon by a team of surgeons from a private hospital of Mumbai,<b> AIIMS' leading light of open heart surgery Dr AK Bisoi was left twiddling his thumbs and sipping coffee in the cafeteria</b>.
<b>This was no small incident. Till a few years ago, the doctors at AIIMS were considered gods and even medics from world's best known medical schools were not allowed inside their sanctum sanctorum. But thanks to a bull inside the china shop called Anbumani Ramadoss, this unfortunate nation's incorrigible Health Minister, AIIMS today is a shadow of its glorious past</b>.
It's not that there has been a sudden loss of competence among its faculty members. But they have been totally demoralised and their morale blown to smithereens. In the first four years of his tenure Ramadoss had a running battle with venerable heart surgeon and director of the Institute Dr P Venugopal, who resisted the Minister's attack on Institute autonomy.
Despite the humiliation of being dismissed, Venegopal fought on and restored the dignity of the Institute and his own pride by getting the High Court to quash the Ministerial fiat.
For the years that Venugopal was at the Institute, the department of cardiovascular surgery remained the flagship department of the AIIMS. Then how within a year of Venugopal's superannuation did the institute get shorn of all its competence? It's not competence but petty politics at play. Bisoi, the inheritor of Venugopal's legacy, could not have been given the opportunity of winning accolades for successfully operating upon the Prime Minister.
<b>If the doctors from the AIIMS were not going to operate upon him, Dr Manmohan Singh would have at least saved the AIIMS faculty and doctors the embarrassment of playing second fiddle to outsiders on their home turf. After all Singh's predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to a private hospital in Mumbai to get his knee replaced.</b> The transplant surgeon was especially flown in from the United States to carry out the surgery.
<b>Dr Singh could also have gone to Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai for the surgery</b>. It would have saved an eminent and promising surgeon like Bisoi the embarrassment of being denied an entry into the Institute's operation theatre, which has been his home for the past two decades. The Prime Minister can afford to get himself admitted at the AIIMS and have doctors from Mumbai to operate on him but not all the patients at the Institute. They have to depend on a proletarian Bisoi than the highest tax-paying Dr Rama Kant Panda.
Though it may sound uncharitable to accuse a sick man of his follies, Dr Manmohan Singh certainly would be judged adversely for having first allowed Anbumani Ramadoss to run amok inside AIIMS and then do his own bit by adding insult to the injured pride of institute faculty. When he recovers, the Prime Minister must mull over if he has done justice to the hallowed centre of medical research and patient care. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->