Introduction

PATIENT CARE

Our results in sophisticated medical and surgical care among the best in the world.The most satisfying aspect of this endeavour is that these cutting-edge modalities are being actually used for the poor.

AIIMS strives hard to make world class clinical care available to millions of underprivileged citizens of India and neighbouringcountries.While its magnificent buildings and hi-tech facilities may create a superficial image of elitism, a visit to

AIIMS is enough to dispel any such illusion

Its corridors are thronged by patients,most of them too poor to afford quality treatment

elsewhere.They come here with high hopes because of the reputation which AIIMS

has built up.AIIMS is, at present,not a single hospital but a conglomerate of facilities.It

has over 1500 spread over the main hospital, Dr.Rajendra Prasad Centre for

Ophthalmic sciences, Cardiothoracic Centre, Neurosciences Centre,Institute Rotary

Centre Hospital and Deaddiction Centre. This complex of facilities caters to about 1.5

million outpatients and 80,000 inpatients every year .The number of surgical operations

performed at AIIMS last year was over 100,000.

Coronary bypass surgery in progress at the

Cardiothoracic Centre,AIIMS

Shri Devi Ram, the first heart transplant patient in India, operated on 3 August 1994 at AIIMS.

However, the strength of AIIMS lies not in numbers, but in availability under one roof of the best

team of medical and surgical experts, state-of-the-art equipment, and our capacity to rise to the

occasion to meet diagnostic or public health challenges.Be it the autoanalyser or the linear

accelerator,magnetic resonance imaging or the gamma knife, AIIMS has them all. Once

something new arrives on the scene,someone, somewhere in the Institute takes the initiative and

musters the energy and drive required to get it

Among the areas pioneered by AIIMS are cardiac catheterization,heart valve surgery,

porto-caval surgery, neonatal surgery,jointreplacement, cochlear implant and multi organ

transplants (cornea, kidney,bone marrow,heart and liver).Our results in sophisticated

medical and surgical care are among the best in the world. The most satisfying aspect of

this endeavour is that these cutting- edge modalities are being actually used for is that

poor.

A patient undergoing laser treatment at Dr.Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences,AIIMS.

The hi-tech facilities and nursing care at AIIMS have contributed a lot to the survival of these quadruplets

The role of AIIMS in patient care is not confined to our own hospital.AIIMS has trained

physicians and surgeons who have fanned out across the country and abroad.For

decades a large proportion of neurologists, neurosurgeons, cardiac surgeons,

paediatric surgeons and gastroenterologists were from AIIMS,simply because we were

the first to start courses in these superspecialities.New we have D M courses also in

endocrinology and medical oncology.The nation has invested heavily in AIIMS from its

doubt that AIIMS meager resources in an attempt to provide the best possible health

care to its people irrespective of their paying capacity. Few would has fulfilled its

commitment.

BCR green signals
ABL red signals Arrows show fusion signals

Interface Cell

An interphase cell from a Philadelphia Chromosome positive patient having chronic myeloid leukemia.The cellshows b c r/ a b/chimeric fusion gene(oncogene). The yellow signal represents overlapping of b c r green)and a b/ (red) signals.

A neurosurgical patient being prepared for treatment with the recetly installed gamma knife

A patient undergoing investigation at the state-of-the-art Magnetic Resonance Imaging facility of AIIMS.

Multichannel Autoanalyser
A multichannal autoanalyser which can give quick estimation of several parameters of blood chemistry using a very small blood sample.

Extension Services

The comprehensive rural health services project (CRHSP) was at established,

ballabgarh, about 35 km from AIIMS,to serve as a model for delivery of health care

to the villages of india. It consist of a subdivisional hospitals and network of a

primary health centres, subcentres and health workers. Its unique feature is a

strong element of participation of the community in its own care. The project has

demonstrated their major improvement in health can be achieved with modest

resources.

Mrs.Renuka Chowdhury,Minister of Health
& Family Welfare and President of AIIMS,
looking at some posters at an exhibition on
Lifestyle and Health after inaugurating it
at AIIMS on 25 september 1997.

An outdoor out patient clinic in a slum at the urbal extension service of Center for Community Medicine, AIIMS.

Most of the health indices set as a goals for the country for the year 2000 have

already been achieved in the ballabgarh block. The infent morality rate in CRHSP

is 54.6 per 1000 live births per year against the national average is 74.There are

no maternal deaths in this population against a national figure of 200-400 per

1,00,000 live births per year. Immunization coverage of children and pregnant

women is over 95% as is the coveragr for vitamin A, ORT use during diarrhoea

and early appropriate treament of pneumonia in children.

Other extension activities of AIIMS include amodel community-based urban health project and

a Deaddiction Centres.

Back on his feet. A patient undergoing treatment in the Department of Physical Medical and Rehabilitation