It will also solve a major gap in healthcare for residents of Burari. The outpatient department of the Delhi government’s Burari hospital was thrown open to patients Wednesday for the first time since the hospital was operationalised in 2020 to treat Covid patients. The hospital started clinics for medicine, general surgery, ENT, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, dermatology, orthopaedics, and ophthalmology for a “dry run”, according to a circular from the hospital.
“Although we were fully prepared and all the departments were running, we did not receive too many patients today. It was a trial run and not many people were aware that OPDs have started. Hopefully, we will start seeing more patients tomorrow onwards,” said Dr Ashish Goyal, medical director of the hospital.
The hospital is expected to receive at least 1,000 patients each day in its outpatient clinics. In comparison, Delhi’s flagship hospital Lok Nayak receives around 10,000 patients a day in its OPD and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital receives around 7,000.
It will also solve a major gap in healthcare for residents of Burari. At present, to seek consultation in a government hospital, most Burari residents travel to either Maharshi Valmiki Hospital at Pooth Khurd or Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital at Mangolpuri, both of which are 15 to 17 km away.
The Burari hospital, which remains unnamed in the haste to start amidst the pandemic, was planned as a 768-bed tertiary care centre. The hospital started with 450 beds, including around 125 oxygen beds, in July 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic. It was also one of the first hospitals to get a PSA oxygen plant. Hospitals in Ambedkar Nagar and Dwarka (called Indira Gandhi Hospital) were also started amidst the pandemic by the government. The pandemic worked as a catalyst in operationalising the three new hospitals, albeit with staff mostly hired on an ad-hoc basis.
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