New Delhi, July 16 (UNI) Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday inaugurated the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur OPD Block of AIIMS, New Delhi along with MoS (HFW) Ashwini Kumar Choubey in the national capital.
Elaborating on the country’s collective efforts against Covid-19, he stated that India was "gradually moving in the direction to win the battle against the pandemic. Less than 2 per cent of the Covid affected patients are admitted in ICUs."
Stating that the lab network has been strengthened, the minister said there had been an exponential growth in the number of labs which have grown from one in January 2020 to 1,234 today. "As on date, we have tested more than 3.26 samples per day”. Dr Harsh Vardhan added that this capacity will be further enhanced to 10 lakh tests per day in the coming 12 weeks."
He added that this is matched with progressively increasing recovered cases and the steadily increasing gap between recovered and active cases (2,81,668).
Prof R Guleria, Director, AIIMS and other senior officials of AIIMS were also present on the occasion.
Built on an area of approximately 6,300 sqm, RAK OPD is the largest known OPD in India.
The new RAK OPD Block also has SMART Lab, built at the cost of Rs 15 crore. This connects the various analysers and technologies in a single integrated workflow. Here, the pre-analytics; analytics and post analytics are all physically connected by a robotic track and are seamlessly integrated by technology.
It has a capacity of expansion up to two lakh tests per day, with a handling capacity of more than 10,000 patients per day. It is one of the largest such track-based laboratory automation installations across Asia Pacific and has been commissioned in less than one year.
The ministers inspected many OPDs and interacted with patients to take stock of the facilities, an official release here said.
Dr Harsh Vardhan also directed Director AIIMS and other officials to expedite the opertationalisation of the Mother and Child Block, Elderly Block and Surgery Blocks so that people could reap health benefits at the earliest. He urged officials and Heads of Departments to undertake detailed and collective brainstorming sessions in each department to assess and anaylse the innovative steps that can be taken for ensuring that all the patients who come to AIIMS New Delhi get the best quality of healthcare.
"There must be zero tolerance for poor/substandard quality of care and towards patients’ inconvenience," he said and urged them to brainstorm and propose patient-friendly reforms.
UNI SD SHK1805