Doctors of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) believe that a lot needs to be done at the medical hub to bring it on a par with the idea of a "centre of excellence".

This comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Rs 600 crore package for three medical colleges and hospitals, including PMCH.

A senior doctor of the surgery department of the hospital, preferring anonymity, said: "The hospital lacks life-savings drugs most of the time. In most cases, when a serious patient is rushed to the emergency wing of the hospital, their relatives don't come with a lot of money because they rush here in anxiety and sometimes, directly from the spot of mishap. A government hospital is supposed to provide drugs to its emergency patients but it is ridiculous that PMCH does not find itself equipped enough to do the same. This is risky to the patient's life. A good portion of the money needs to be spent on drugs."

"Presently, the situation is such that whenever an emergency case comes to us, we ask the patient's relatives to buy saline water from outside the hospital. Be it an antibiotic, intravenous fluid or an antiseptic cream like Betadine, nothing is found in the hospital. There are times when we need to ask them to buy surgical thread too," he added.

Another senior doctor from the surgery department of the hospital said: "The hospital's emergency wing is running without a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine. In trauma-related cases, wherein an MRI is of utmost necessity, doctors ask the patient's relative to get the test done from private hospitals. Besides, we have two X-ray machines at the hospital - one in the radiotherapy department (services of which can be availed till one in the afternoon everyday) and the other in the emergency wing. There is a major load of emergency patients in the hospital. We need to send emergency patients outside to get X-rays done too, as we have only one machine working round the clock."?

The doctor added: "We need more computerised tomography (CT) scan machines. The hospital has only one at present, running on a public-private partnership mode. The scan results reach the hospital after four days. It is not possible to make emergency patients wait that long and so we refer them to private hospitals. The surgical intensive care unit of the hospital has only eight beds. The number of beds needs to be increased."?

Head of orthopaedics department at the hospital V.K. Sinha said PMCH should develop an infrastructure for spinal surgery, microscopic surgery and joint replacement surgery. "We do not have the proper infrastructure to carry out such operations," he said.

Sinha also said the hospital services needed to be more organised.

G.K. Sharan, a doctor from the neurosurgery department of the hospital, also talked about the need for the MRI facility. "We work with many old instruments. These things need to be addressed," he said.

PMCH superintendent Lakhendra Prasad said the need of the hour was to increase the number of beds in the hospital. "We have around 1,600 beds at the hospital at present. The number of patients on any given day is 3,000. We need at least 400- 500 beds in the emergency wing, which has only 100 beds now," said Prasad.

Doctors also said facilities related to kidney transplant and cardiology must be made available at the hospital.