Panel slams use of private ambulance to shift victim

A Parliamentary panel on Tuesday pulled up the health ministry for borrowing an ambulance to take the victim of the December 16 gang rape to the airport for flying her to Singapore.

A Parliamentary panel on Tuesday pulled up the health ministry for borrowing an ambulance to take the victim of the December 16 gangrape to the airport for flying her to Singapore.

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The panel said it was shocking to know that top government-controlled medical institutions in the country lacked modern facilities.

The parliamentary standing committee on health, headed by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Rajya Sabha MP Brajesh Pathak, questioned the government's failure in updating state-of-the-art medical facilities to deal with extreme emergencies.

Several committee members lamented that the government had to borrow an ambulance from a private hospital, sources said. They asked why the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the country's top medical institute, did not have a similar facility despite crores of rupees having been spent on its infrastructure.

Members are also said to have told the health ministry officials that the government had to seek the opinion of private doctors instead of relying on government doctors treating the rape victim.

The working of AIIMS was under the committee's scrutiny and it asked the ministry to improve its facilities.

Emphasising on better hygiene conditions in the hospital, the committee also discussed the issue of shortage of doctors, with some seeking early start of the six AIIMS-like institutes across the country.