With 724 hospitals and nursing homes and a bed-capacity of 36,352, the national capital has 2.14 beds per 1,000 persons, almost three times the national average. Yet patients in Delhi cannot get a bed for surgery or treatment when they need it because 50 per cent of them — being treated at government-run hospitals such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences — are from other states with little or no infrastructure. Despite the fact that the doctors at AIIMS treat over 10,000 patients and perform nearly 350 operations daily, the list of patients in queue is getting longer and people in need of elective (non-emergency) surgery have to wait up to two years. Since most patients from far and wide come with at least two of three from their village to care for them, the country’s most prestigious referral hospital looks worse than a dingy, overcrowded railway platform. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has announced setting up six more such institutes in Patna, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Raipur, Jodhpur and Haridwar to address the problem of overcrowding. For more information visit: http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/editorials/focus-on-rural-healthcare;-free-it-of-corruption/301110.html