Ashwini Chaubey’s red signal to patients from Bihar in Delhi AIIMS kicks up storm
Patna,(BiharTimes): The Rashtriya Janata Dal has blasted Union minister of state for health Ashwini Chaubey for his suggestion that patients from Bihar should be treated at Patna’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences and not in AIIMS Delhi.
In fact a case too has been filed in this regard in Bihar.
“I have asked the director of AIIMS that patients who can be treated in Patna AIIMS should be referred there immediately,” the minister said at a function in New Delhi.
“There is no need to increase the crowd here...You know how patients flock here...,” he reportedly said.
Reacting to the statement RJD vice president Shivanand Tiwari said Chaubey is holding a ministerial portfolio at the Centre for the first time and has forgotten his responsibilities. How can he order doctors in Delhi not to treat patients from Bihar?
However, Chaubey’s fellow partyman and Bihar’s health minister Mangal Pandey said he was at the event where Chaubey made this comment.
He said everyone there understood the emotions of Ashwini Chaubey. It was
clear that the minister meant patients from Bihar should go to Patna, so that the AIIMS there gets the required facilities. Patna AIIMS should treat patients like the Delhi AIIMS.
BJP’s alliance partner, the Janata Dal (United), however, has a slight different opinion.
Conceding that the Delhi AIIMS is a national property and no one can stop anyone from going there, party spokesman, Ajay Alok, who is himself a doctor, asked why people would want to go to Delhi if adequate facilities exist in Bihar.
According to him Chaubey knows about the problems of the people of Bihar and should try to solve them. He should make Patna AIIMS just like AIIMS of Delhi, so that the people of Bihar don’t have to go out of the state for treatment.
It needs to be recalled that when Chaubey was health minister in Bihar in the Nitish Kumar cabinet he once threatened doctors with the the “chopping off the hands” remarks.
Chaubey, though from Bhagalpur, represents Buxar in Lok Sabha.
