The new AIIMS-Patna boss found the healthcare hub lacking in faculty and infrastructure - as students have been claiming for a long time - on her first visit to the institute on Tuesday.

Gitanjali Batmanabane, the AIIMS-Bhubaneswar director, has been given additional responsibility of the Patna super-speciality hub after G.K. Singh retired on Monday. She said comparing AIIMS-Patna with AIIMS-Bhubaneswar was "nothing but a foolish idea", as she pointed out the institute in the Odisha capital had more beds and faculty members.

Gitanjali said against AIIMS-Patna's 150 beds, the Bhubaneswar hospital had 500 beds. She also pointed out that AIIMS Patna had 50 faculty members against 140 faculty members in Bhubaneswar.

She also took note of the fact that many of the departments either had no faculty member or were being run by one teacher.

"The new director held separate meetings with the head of departments, other faculty members and students on Tuesday," an administrative official at AIIMS Patna said on condition of anonymity. "" She wanted details about developments concerning the college and hospital. The faculty members and students apprised her about the crisis being faced and she assured every one of the works being expedited."

Head of one of the departments at AIIMS-Patna, however, said: "We made her aware about delays in promotion of various faculty members and also told her about the lack of floor space - the main hurdle in starting the trauma and emergency services. The new director has very little idea about AIIMS-Patna because she has no connection with Bihar. It's also been just around a month that she joined AIIMS-Bhubaneswar as its director. Here, day-to-day work will be affected a bit because Gitanjali ji is not a full-time director. She would leave for Bhubaneswar on Wednesday."

Interview for appointment of a regular director for AIIMS-Patna will be held on November 16, the faculty member said. While five faculty members have applied for the post as have few faculty members of Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences. The appointment is supposed to be completed within two months.

Sources said MBBS students at the institute also apprised Gitanjali about the deficiencies plaguing the healthcare hub.

They raised the issue of delay in recruitment of faculty, lack of clinical teaching space and hold-up in starting the trauma and emergency wings of the hospital.

also requested Gitanjali to help start the healthcare hub's trauma and emergency wing as soon as possible because the first batch of MBBS students would start their internship next year.

For interns, trauma and emergency experience is a must.