Pathetic condition of Regional Institute Of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Imphal

Chetananda Kha-nganba *

It is really pathetic to know the conditions of some departments and its working condition of a prestigious medical institute and hospital like Regional Institute of Medical Sciences(RIMS), Imphal.

It is a face of our state which stands out from other health institutes of the region with multispeciality facilities. It has been said that it is going to be upgraded in par with AIIMS,Delhi.

But alas due to the incompetency of the concerned authorities it seems to be losing its prestige day by day forget about its upgradation.

To name a department in particular, "Department of Radiodiagnosis" is one of the most important department . As the name suggest the department deals with starting from the simplest x-ray to more complicated Ultrasonography, CT Scan, MRI etc. which are all very important for diagnosing an illness.

Since the success of a treatment depend much on the proper and accurate diagnosis of the illness, hence the importance of the department.

But the functioning of the department is totally in chaos and haphazard showing incompetency and inactivity of the concerned administrator. There seems to be a drastic shortage in manpower of the department.

There are only three regular doctors in the department (i.e one professor and HOD and two Assistant Professors), and two contract doctors and both of them are Registrar. Looking at the number patients in the department that must be numbering around 200 in an average per day, the number of doctors seems to be very inadequate and understaffed.

The department has got Post Graduate courses with an input of two seats every year from within the state and/or outside the state. But it seems the department is not even qualified for Under Graduate Courses forget about the Post Graduate Courses.

According to the guidelines of the then Medical Council Of India (MCI), it should have a minimum One professor, two Associates, three Assistants and Four Registrars.

So the million dollar question is "how do we expect a proper and correct diagnosis from such a heavily understaffed department with such a large number of patients all the time"?

It is hard to be justified.

Are not we putting ourselves in danger if we have been mistreated due to a wrong diagnosis? Could we imagine the consequences? Who will be responsible if such things should occur and whom to blame?

Ourselves or the authorites?

But it will be our lives in the end. Then who is playing with our lives?

Lastly but not the least I am not blaming anyone in particular or together but it could easily be seen that many middlemen from many private diagnostic clinics could be seen with bags and leaving the contents inside the doctor's chamber only to be collected again later on sometime.

These procedures are routine each and every-day. Are they reporting the cases for private clinics from the comfort of their office rooms? If so, aren't they punishable?

Aren't they getting the non-practising allowances? Why the authorities are not doing anything?

These questions may remain unanswered but don't we feel that we deserve an answer?