The Hindu : New Delhi News : AIIMS suspends erring staff

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 21, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

AIIMS suspends erring staff

By Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 20. The All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) today suspended its three staffers arrested on Wednesday by the Delhi police on charges of stealing and selling hospital medicines in the open market.

According to the AIIMS administration, the arrest was a result of the `active supervision' by the hospital authorities after reports of some staffers indulging in pilfer.

The problem of missing medicines, equipments and even hospital fittings, however, is nothing new to Delhi hospitals. A stone's thrown from AIIMS at Safdurjung Hospital is also faced with a similar problem, which saw two major thefts last year in the operation theatre where costly medicines and surgery material went missing.

"A case was registered last year, but the investigation proceeded on expected lines, internal audit brought out nothing, police search stopped without any results and the entire episode was swept under the carpet. But it is a well-known fact that costly equipment routinely go missing. After every major theft grills are put up, locks are changed and the staffs are pulled up, but things have remained the same so far. At the hospital, not only are drugs and medical equipments stolen, hardware including taps, tube lights and air coolers also go missing at regular interval. It is common knowledge that only insiders can carry out the work. Also, there is never an account of medicines that are `misplaced', and thus no responsibility can be fixed," said insiders.

Meanwhile the hospital is now trying to work on introducing a `magnetic code' system on a trial basis to check the stealing.

The Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Hospital that had been plagued by reports of huge loss due to hospital staff being engaged in thefts, is finally putting in place checks to stop the practice. Explaining the measures in place, the Medical Superintendent of LNJP, Ram Teke, said: "We have already written to the authorities asking for additional security guards to help man the numerous entry points in the hospital, a problem which should be solved after we shift into the single building. Instructions are also in place to carry out surprise checks of the staff and even garbage. Also, we have given strict instructions to update all record registers within 24-hours of any transaction and random checks to be carried out at least once in a week. Besides this, all drugs costing more than Rs. 1000, being issued to the patients would be provided for only three days at a time, cutting down over issuing, putting effective checks and even reducing waste."

Speaking about the problem in his hospital, the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Medical Superintendent, N.K. Chaturvedi, said though there aren't any major cases that have come to light, purchases are now being done every three months to keep a tighter check on the quantity that is brought in. Also, the internal audit system has been made stringent.

For his part, the Delhi Health Minister, Yoganand Shastri, said: "We haven't received any such complaints so far and I have supervised several raids at hospitals and nothing has come out of it. We are fairly clean and safe."

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