AIIMS and goals

If only satisfaction was plentifully available at AIIMS. Our stellar medical institute has been demoralised by an administrative apparatus that shredded the professional self-respect and independence of its doctors. Some of this was inevitable,given that AIIMS has been tasked with ministering to the powerful,for decades. However,the bureaucratic stranglehold became near-unbearable in the last few years and the dismaying trickle of doctors out of AIIMS has much to do with this internal culture. There has been no recruitment since 2005,and almost 200 important positions lie empty. That the PMs own doctor has joined this migration only caps the worrying trend. The Valiathan committee was set up in July 2006 after the pitched war between the then Union health minister,Anbumani Ramadoss,and then AIIMS director,P. Venugopal. It enjoined the institution to model itself on the IITs,to improve its financial picture and administration. Like IITs,doctors and faculty should be allowed to earn from consultancies a system that would deter this desertion to private hospitals and institutions abroad. IIT and CSIR labs have also road-tested several formulas for splitting revenues from such consultancies. The committee also suggested that the health ministry loosen its clutch over the institution,and preside over a cluster of AIIMS-type institutions currently being set up,much in the way the HRD ministry oversees the IITS. It sought to improve the career ladder,moving promotions quicker and rotating heads of department,to energise the institute. It also sought to encourage experts from other labs to come work at AIIMS in areas where the institute itself lacked updated expertise,so that the institute becomes a great hub of research.

These are all eminently doable suggestions. Money is clearly not the issue. But if its aura of distinction is destroyed,then AIIMS will be impoverished much beyond this current job vacuum.