Bihar: 400 odd Students boycott classes in AIIMS Patna alleging lack of facilities

Patna: Alleged lack of facilities and required infrastructure, have created a halt in teaching activities at the All India Institute of medical sciences (AIIMS Patna) in the state. 400 odd students raised alarm bells by boycotting classes since Wednesday.

According to a report by TOI, the students have been protesting against lack of teachers as well as basic infrastructure that includes lab facilities, blood bank and autopsy at the central medical institute.

The students participating in the boycott have claimed that the institute has only 55 teachers against the sanction of 300 teachers.

One of the agitating students on anonymity stated that "There's acute shortage of teachers in crucial departments like medicine, ophthalmology ENT, psychiatry, dermatology, forensic medicine and toxicology as well as pharmacology. We are not given proper clinical training as the limited faculty is busy with OPD and admitted patients.”

A charter of demands by the students states that a premier institute like AIIMS-Patna does not have emergency and trauma care facilities. A blood bank is still in the process of becoming functional. "First of the five batches of AIIMS-Patna will pass out this year. How will they do internship here without emergency facility?"

As per the charter, "AIIMS-Patna does not have pathology, pharmacology and microbiology labs.

The students while protesting met the Director of the institute regarding the matter. He asked them to dissolve the protest but they refused to do so until a deadline is fixed for the redressal of their demands.

Director’s say:

When asked about the issue of lack of facilities and basic infrastructure that was pitched by the agitating students, the institute’s director, Dr G K Singh maintained that there is a lack of facilities like adequate floor space and adequate number of faculty members. "But these problems have not reached such a point of criticality that the students need to resort to an agitation.

He stated that these problems are not hampering their studies.

In another statement he asked for the intervention of government by saying, “The issues of floor space and faculty require the intervention of the Union health ministry for their solution. As many as 195 faculty recruitments were made in February this year. However, the institute body (IB) comprising members from across India red-flagged it on the flimsy ground that the upper age limit was extended up to 58 years without taking its permission. It was done only after the ministry gave its go-ahead and we went to the IB for post-facto approval like a couple of other AIIMSs did.”

The OPD and IPD facilities are functional in the AYUSH building of the institute, whereby when asked on the construction of specific floors for the two departments Singh stated that it was supposed to be finished by now, but it is a project of the Union ministry, and its execution is monitored by its own engineers in which the director has hardly any say.