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GB Pant hospital gets new MRI machine to replace the one that broke down three years ago
New Delhi
New Delhi
Govind Ballabh Pant hospital, the biggest super-speciality hospital run by Delhi government, got a new MRI machine on Thursday to replace the one that broke three years ago in February 2016.
“Expansion of health services – Inaugurated the 3T MRI machine at Delhi government’s GB Pant hospital,” said Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain in a tweet.
“This is a 3T machine, the best available in the market. The test reports are very precise. Not only will it help our doctors for patient care, but it will also help with research work,” said Dr SM Raheja, medical superintendent of the hospital.GB Pant hospital is located near Delhi Gate and is a reputed post-doctoral teaching institute.
The 735-bed hospital, which treats only serious patients referred by other hospitals in their out-patient clinic, sees a footfall of nearly 3,000 daily. There are over 2,000 admissions every month in GB Pant.
“This hospital performs complex surgeries and almost all the patients need an MRI before. Currently, these patients are referred to private centres that the government has tied-up with,” said a doctor from the hospital, on condition of anonymity.
The neighbouring Lok Nayak hospital is the only one of the 34 Delhi government hospitals that has an MRI machine.
Other Delhi government hospitals such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Guru Teg Bahadur, and Baba Saheb Ambedkar continue to function without an MRI machine. GTB hospital evens offers a three-year MD Radiology course.
To address the shortage of diagnostic tools in its hospitals, the Delhi government tied up with 23 private centres across the city to provide high-end tests like MRI, CT, PET-CT, and Mamography. The government pays the centre for the tests from the corpus fund, Delhi Arogya Kosh.Over 1.34 lakh people have availed these services under the scheme till June this year, according to government data.
Before this scheme was launched, the government had planned to set up 5MRI machines and 10 CT scan machines in the biggest hospitals on a public-private partnership basis. The project did not take off.
