Patients cannot expect 24x7 trauma and emergency services at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-Patna anytime soon, but hospital staff will get a gym worth Rs 1 crore.

The lack of infrastructure, manpower and hospital space may have driven patients away but the hospital administration seems to be in no hurry to make rectifications because it is busy setting up the fitness facility sprawling across two rooms for its doctors and students.

The gymnasium, according to the hospital administration, will be inaugurated in the next four to five days. Sources said the gym will be as swank as professional ones.

Yogesh Kumar Saxena, the deputy medical superintendent of the hospital, said more than half the work of installing gym machines was over. "We plan to get our director-in-charge, Gitanjali Batmanabane (director of AIIMS-Bhubaneswar), to inaugurate the gym. She will arrive here on Friday and will stay here for a few days," said Saxena.

Asked whether the gym was more important than starting the 24x7 trauma and emergency wing, Saxena said: "You are unnecessarily sensationalising the issue. Starting a gym and starting a 24x7 trauma and emergency service are two different things.

"We are unable to start the 24x7 trauma and emergency service because the hospital is still facing shortage of doctors. The health ministry has to look into the issue of recruitment of faculty members (doctors), while the gym has come up on the basis of local tender floated by the hospital administration. Another major issue for which we are not being able to start 24-hour emergency services is the lack of instruments. HLL Lifecare Limited, a Union government enterprise, is supposed to buy us instruments. Had we be given power to purchase the machines through local tender, things would have been far more easy."

Saxena said the decision of starting a gym had already been in the AIIMS-Patna project since the very beginning and it was not decided randomly.

Doctors of AIIMS-Patna said they loved the idea of having a gym on the hospital campus for their personal grooming but if they had to choose between the gym facility and the 24-hour functional trauma and emergency services, they would chose the latter.

"There is no comparison between the two facilities. Though we would love to have the gym that can help us stay physically fit to do our job in a better way, for a doctor, his/her service comes first. Therefore, we would choose the trauma and emergency services," said the doctor, wishing anonymity.

Talking about the glitches in starting the 24-hour functional trauma and emergency services, the doctor said: "The hospital does not even have a blood bank. The blood storage facility doesn't allow us to do the crossmatching of the blood sample so that we can use it after the test.

"The hospital has to take blood on loan from other blood banks but that has limitations. The shelf life of blood varies between 30 and 40 days. That means the blood can be kept for a certain period and then we cannot have blood of particular groups all the time, which can turn to be a big problem during surgeries in case of heavy bleeding and further need of blood. Lack of hospital space is another issue. Though three floors of the trauma and emergency building have been handed over to us, we still have only five operation theatres. In other underconstruction operation theatres, water connection has still not been given.

"There are only 55 doctors against the sanctioned 305. Departments such as plastic surgery and cardiothoracic, important in trauma and emergency services, still run with one doctor. Doctors have been able to do many surgeries despite these limitations."