A team of five doctors from the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in Delhi will visit Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) this week to inspect facilities being developed for starting liver transplant surgeries at the Patna hospital.
The team will sign a memorandum of understanding with IGIMS on July 1 under which the New Delhi hospital would provide the Patna facility assistance in starting liver transplants.
The ILBS team will comprise Viniyendra Pamecha, doctor in the hepato-pancreato biliary surgery and liver transplantation department, S.K. Sharma, head of department for anaesthesia, biomedical engineer Sarvpriya Singh, civil engineer R.K. Saini and senior administrative officer Vimal Rai Sharma.
The team was supposed to come on June 24, but the visit was deferred by a week because of audit work at the ILBS.
The authorities mailed the IGIMS administration informing them about the change on Friday.
"If they find any deficiency or inadequacy, they will let us know and we will address the issues," said Manish Mandal, additional medical superintendent at IGIMS.
He said under the MoU to be signed between ILBS and IGIMS, the doctors from Delhi will perform the first 10 liver transplant surgeries at IGIMS along with the Patna hospital's doctors and another 10 such surgeries would be performed by IGIMS doctors under supervision of the Delhi doctors.
At present, no government or private hospital in Bihar provides liver transplant facility and patients have to go to hospitals such as ILBS or AIIMS in Delhi.
The surgery costs around Rs 20 lakh in other states it is expected that the cost at IGIMS will be less. Mandal, however, said the rate has not been fixed yet.
"Operating theatres for performing liver transplants are ready," he added. "The requisite equipment has also been purchased and we are only left with the assembling work of the equipment in the special intensive care unit because we need suggestions from the ILBS team on it. We can finish the assembling work of the parts within a month."
IGIMS has spent around Rs 12 crore on developing the liver transplant service. "We have used funds meant for other heads in developing the liver transplant facility," said a doctor at the hospital on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak on the matter. "We had sent a requisition of Rs 20 crore to the health department but the department provided us Rs 4.5 crore around a month ago to develop the facility. The department has, however, assured us of more funds."
The health department has also sanctioned Rs 30 crore of a Rs 240-crore fund meant for a medical college and hospital at IGIMS.
With the funds, 210 beds each would be added to the medicine and allied departments, surgery and allied departments, and another 60 beds in the obstetrics and gynaecology department.
Five intensive critical care units, five intensive care units, five ICU burn units, five paediatrics intensive care unit, five renal ICUs will also be developed and a CT (computer tomography) scan and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine will be purchased.