Rs 2-crore for Sec'bad military hospital upgradation

Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS) Vice-Admiral V K Singh today said that Rs 2 crore had been sanctioned to the Secunderabad Military Hospital for upgradation of its equipment.

Addressing a three-day meeting of the JCM-HQ DGAFMS Council here today, Singh, who took over as the new head of the AFMS on May 1, 2005, said his first priority was to modernise military hospitals in the country and prevent diseases such as bird flu and HIV in the armed forces.

The AFMS, with a workforce of 75,000 uniformed personnel and 50,000 civilian officials, serves through more than 400 hospitals, including seven major 1,000-1,500 bed hospitals. Being chaired by Singh, the three-day meeting began at the Secunderabad Military Hospital (MH) today.

"Though the Military Hospital at Secunderabad is not well-equipped, it is highly modernised and capable of rising to any occasion to serve even surrounding civilian population," Singh said.

The military hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune are equipped to perform liver transplant, cardio-vascular and neuro surgeries as well as cochlear implant. There are plans to upgrade two more centres.

Speaking on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the armed forces, Singh said, "We, in the armed forces, have our own three-pronged approach towards prevention of HIV/AIDS involving research centres, medical teams to interact with personnel, and peer workshops for declaration of the disease."

"If the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS among the civilian population is 0.9 per cent, it is 0.025 per cent among the armed forces. At present in India, a screening test is not compulsory at the recruitment stage in the armed forces. Anybody tested positive is not thrown out of the service but treated with anti-retro viral therapy," Singh said.