Dr B.R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital (IRCH) at AIIMS has been letting down the patients coming to get the radiation therapy. According to doctors both the machines at the radiology department are around 15 years old and laying defunct. The cancer hospital’s OPD receives more than 1,000 people in a day.
The cancer hospital at AIIMS is surviving on a two machine, one of which is not in working mode for last few months and other simulation machine partly working which stops working most of the time, said one of the doctors on condition of anonymity.
Cancer patients in critical condition from across the country are left with no option but to wait for the machines to be fixed and are forced to take shelter outside the premises of AIIMS. “We can’t afford to go back. We have to just wait for the machine to get repair, said a patient who has lung cancer and is awaiting treatment.
Another patient has been staying outside the cancer hospital at AIIMS for the last two months. Rakhi Hails from a small village in Bihar came to the city to get treatment for her brother Ramesh, who is diagnosed with throat cancer.
But the brother and sister say that they have not even been able to make it to the first step of the radiation therapy, because the simulation machines at the country’s pre-eminent hospital is lying defunct for more than two months.