Guwahati, Nov. 16: Gauhati Medical College Hospital (GMCH) has to set many things right before being upgraded to the status of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS).

Union minister for health and family welfare Anbumani Ramadoss, who was in the city last week, told Assam health minister Bhumidhar Barman that despite being the largest healthcare institution in the region, the GMCH had to prove its ?fitness? to achieve AIIMS status.

Ramadoss said the Centre was already developing the Northeast Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, a super-speciality hospital in Shillong, on a par with the AIIMS. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to inaugurate the hospital within six months.

?Under these circumstances, the Centre has no immediate plans to upgrade any one of the existing hospitals in the region to the AIIMS status. It is now focused on setting up AIIMS-like institutes in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttaranchal under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana,? said an official quoting the Union minister.

Under the scheme, the Centre is upgrading 11 hospitals in the country, barring the Northeast, to the AIIMS status, the official added.

Many in the GMCH said the government and the hospital authorities should take the minister?s message as a wake-up call. A doctor said the GMCH needs to improve in several areas. ?Though funds are coming in from government agencies, the hospital has not witnessed any noticeable change. To a patient at the GMCH, it is not the AIIMS status which matters but the basis minimum service.?

Ramadoss has asked Dispur to furnish a detailed report on the achievements and failures of the GMCH in the past three years.