DIBRUGARH, June 14 - The present medical infrastructure, including human resources, of the Assam Medical College and Hospital (AMCH), the premier medical institute of the North East, is too little to handle the present day rush of patients.
Post opening of the Dhola-Sadiya bridge and the Bogibeel bridge, the Out Patient Department (OPD) of the medical institute is swarmed with about 3,000 patients on an average daily. Earlier, patients at the OPD numbered around 1,800-1,900 and not beyond.
Patients in various departments are now seen sharing beds as the number of people admitted is higher than the number of beds. The Mother and Child Care Unit and the Gynaecology and Obstetrics department are the worst and most pitiful with scenes of three patients in one bed. The number of beds in the ICUs is also scarce, given the increase in admission of critical patients.
AMCH Principal Dr Hiranya Kumar Goswami said that the load has increased drastically after the opening of the Bogibeel and Dhola-Sadiya bridges. �We are extending medical help to as many people as we can with the existing manpower and infrastructure. We cannot refuse them. The existing infrastructure is of the yesteryears and it cannot meet today�s challenges. We require additional counters at the OPD section and more beds to cope up with the huge rush of patients,� he said.
It needs to be mentioned here that the medical institute with a bed strength of 1,500 is yet to fill up posts of some 1,000 nurses and about 350 teaching faculties. Again, with the opening of six super-speciality departments in a few months, the medical institute will require at least another 18 senior teachers besides other medical staff.
On the need to increase the number of beds, Dr Goswami said proposals have been sent to the government to annex the urban hospital at Graham Bazar so as to start at least the Gynae Department there, so that patients could be admitted and treated there by the AMCH doctors. �We do feel the need of increasing the number of beds from 1,500 to 2,000, given the huge rush of patients but again we also need additional human resources and extended infrastructure,� he said.
