An Oasis for India's Poorest
The All India Institute treated 3.5 million patients last year, and charged each a dollar.
By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek International
Oct. 30, 2006 issue - Several hundred poor and middle-class Indians are awaiting screening for dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease that has reached near-epidemic proportions in Delhi this fall. Sick and frightened, they lie on straw mats and blankets spread over the pavement in a queue that streams around the ambulance drive and out to the main road. Inside, doctors in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, or AIIMS, are working to fight off the outbreak of the sometimes deadly virus. Mosquitoes are common on the hospital campus, too, and a dozen ward doctors have contracted dengue themselves. One medical student has died.
This is what it takes to be India's best public hospital. Last year the government-run hospital, with about 2,000 beds, treated 3.5 million people, achieving mortality and infection rates comparable to the best facilities in the developed world—for fees that come to about $1 a day for inpatients.
AIIMS can do this because of government funding of about $100 million a year. Because it doesn't waste much cash on amenities, it can afford to buy cutting-edge equipment. Senior residents at AIIMS make about $400 a month. But they stay because of perks—doctors get the chance to spend one or two years working abroad, for instance—plus the opportunity to work with the latest technology and obtain big research grants.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15365147/site/newsweek/
© 2006 MSNBC.com
Monday, October 23, 2006
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6 comments:
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It is one of the best hospitals in India with cutting edge technology. The fact that it is cheap does not make the medicine practiced in it cheap. Ask someone who has been to the hospital ad they will all testify to the depth of knowledge of the doctors there. However, I agree that the situation can be improved substantially. But this is only a very minor ill among the more serious ones that are plaguing the country.
i think Aiims is one of the best medical college in the world i hope it is nothing nothing less to harvard in usa
i think aiims is one of the best medical colleges in the world i want to aiims nothing less to harvard or any other best university than aiims
aiims should be no one in the world our central govt should provide more funds to aiims i am btech final year student in hyderabad
no obc nothing only merit in aiims because aiims is not a normal medical institute
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