The Sri Sathya Sai Medical Care Division runs five medical institutions
The Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Puttaparthi has 300 beds and 12 surgical units, five intensive care units, two cardiac catheterisation laboratories, medical and surgical wards and a 24-hour emergency unit. The hospital provides free treatment to all patients.
On 23 November 1990, during his birthday discourse, Sri Sathya Sai Baba while talking about the inability of healthcare access to the poor declared that within one year a tertiary care hospital will come up in the village of Puttaparthi, which will provide high-end care free to all the patients.
"There are few who are ready to set up such institutions to provide free facilities for the poor. Therefore, from the start we decided to set up a hundred-crore hospital near Prasanthi Nilayam itself. Even as higher education is free here, "Higher Medicine" also will be free. People spend some lakhs to get heart surgery done in the U.S. What is the plight of the poor? Who looks after them? If they go to the cities, they will not get even coloured water. Recognising this fact, we have launched this big hospital project. Whether it is heart bypass operation, or a kidney transplant, or a lung operation or brain surgery, everything will be done free. This has been decided upon from the very starting of the project." Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Sai Baba added that the hospital would be inaugurated on 22 November 1991.
The first cardiothoracic operations were carried out successfully exactly one year later. The Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences was inaugurated by Sri Sathya Sai Baba and the then prime minister of India, Shri P. V. Narasimha Rao, on 22 November 1991.
"The second phase was inaugurated a year later by the then President of India. Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, when the uro-nephrology department started functioning."
The super specialty hospital continued to expand: opening the kidney transplant programme in 1993, Department of Ophtalmology in 1994, and in 1995, the CT Scanner and Vitreo Retinal Services were inaugurated.
In 1999 the Lithotripsy Centre was opened.
Kidney transplantation is no longer offered in the hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment