Fans of the British political satire Yes Minister will remember a classic episode about a new hospital with more than 500 staff and no patients.
In New Delhi, life is imitating art in a way that even the creators of Yes Minister would have found difficult to believe.
More than 16 years after construction began on two so-called “super” hospitals in the Indian national capital, the 650-bed Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital and the 300-bed Janakpuri Super Speciality Hospital, neither facility is yet ready to admit a single patient.
That hasn’t stopped administrators claiming the hospitals are operating according to world’s best practice, nor billing taxpayers more than $1 million a year for operating expenses such as office supplies and staff salaries.
From the outside, the Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital in east Delhi seemed like a hive of activity this week, with a phalanx of security officials on patrol and teams of gardeners tending to the freshly planted lawns and shrubs.
Inside, though, the deserted hallways, empty wards and seemingly abandoned reception areas gave the impression of something a little more forlorn.
Not that the lack of beds seemed to bother the hospital’s radiant director-principal Dr Sunil Khattri, who said the hospital was “already functional”.
“There are two types of care,” Dr Khattri said. “One is the standard overnight care that is provided through hospitals beds, and the other is outpatient care, daycare facilities, and in this we are fully functional,” he said.
Leading a personally guided tour through the largely vacant building, there were a handful of patients to be found, some receiving kidney dialysis, others queuing for heart echographs, and yet more receiving treatment for gastroenterological problems.
“All of the equipment is the best in the world,” Dr Khattri said. “All of these facilities are world class.
''They are also clean, and very comfortable for the patients, and their safety is also being taken care of,” he said, adding the now familiar couplet, “world-class”.
He was perhaps most proud of the medical gas plant that will supply the hospital’s 650 beds with access to piped oxygen, nitrous oxide and other gases.
Walking between the gas tanks, purifiers, and compressors, Dr Khattri said the facility was unlike any other in India.
“When we start admitting patients, there is no other hospital in the country that will be able to offer this standard of reliability,” he said. “It will cope with breakdowns, power cuts, nothing will interrupt the supply of gas to our patients.”
That none of the sparkling new machinery was working, nor the gas pipes installed in the hospital wards, didn’t seem to lessen Dr Khattri’s enthusiasm. Nor did the fact that most of the hospital was without air conditioning, or even a proper electricity supply.
Describing the long years that Delhi’s residents have waited for the two hospitals to be up and running, Dr Khattri said “history is behind us. I can’t comment on the past.
“We are currently on target to start rolling out the in-patient services by the middle of November, 2014,” he said. “All of us here at RGSS are committed to getting the hospital up and running by that date, we have the full commitment and support of the government and the Public Works Department.”
That it took 10 years to build the Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital and its companion, Janakpuri Super Specialty Hospital in west Delhi, and another five years for the local Delhi government to work out how to run the hospitals, has become a national, not very funny joke in a country where thousands of patients die each year due to lack of access to specialised medical care.
Initially the Delhi government opted to run the hospitals as a kind of joint venture with the private sector, but was unable to find a partner who believed the hospitals could be run at a profit.
The government finally opted to run the hospitals through a society of top health officials and eminent medical officials to create what Dr Khattri described as a “not-for profit public hospital”.
Over at Janakpuri Super Specialty Hospital on the other side of the world’s second largest city, a few outpatient services are also up and running, but most of the hospital remains locked and local government sources told The Times of India this week that the hospital had not hired a single specialist.
According to A.K. Walia, Delhi’s health minister from 1998 to 2003, and again from 2011 to 2013 the delays have been mainly due to changes of government and changes of ministers.
But public health officials have been scathing in their criticism.
Amulya Nidhi, convenor, of Swasthya Adhikar Manch (Health Right's Forum), said the delays were responsible for the loss of thousands of lives.
“In India we suffer such a severe shortage of healthcare services, it’s impossible to describe the delays that ordinary people face,” Mr Nidhi said.
“And yet we have these people here sitting around basically doing nothing to improve that, just wasting public funds, letting people die and basically trying to divert people into a privately funded health system that most people cannot afford.”
Professor K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, said it was a shame that two hospitals meant to serve the people were lying unutilised for so long. If the Delhi state government could not get the hospitals up and running they should be handed over to the federal government to manage, he said.
