Tripura, Mizoram may depanel AMRI Hospital

Agartala/Aizawl, Dec 11 (IANS) The devastating fire at AMRI (Advanced Medicare and Research Institute) Hospital in Kolkata may force the Tripura and Mizoram governments to remove it from their list of referral hospitals, officials said here Sunday.
Patients from several states in the northeast and employees of state-owned ONGC head to the hospital as AMRI is empanelled as a referral hospital for Tripura, Mizoram and other state governments in the northeast, apart from ONGC.
'We would consider at a high level meeting here next week whether the state government would delist AMRI from the list of referral hospitals,' a Tripura health department official said.
Tripura Health Minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters that the matter of referring patients from the state to AMRI would now be reconsidered because of the 'horrible tragedy'.
Similar views were expressed by Mizoram.
'If private hospitals like AMRI do not properly care for the patients, we would not refer our patients to these places,' a Mizoram government official told reporters in Aizawl.
ONGC spokesman Rathindra Kumar Deb told IANS : 'AMRI is in our registry among the 10 to 12 empanelled hospitals in Kolkata. But after Friday's tragedy we would not advise our employees to go there.'
In the worst fire tragedy in any hospital in India, 91 patients and staffers were killed in Kolkata's well-known AMRI Hospital when the blaze engulfed its annexe building early Friday, trapping dozens of helpless patients.

I would like to congratulate the Tripura and Mizoram governments for taking a wise but belated decision.
I would also advise all the mediclaim insurance companies to do the same.
I took this decision about six months ago when I removed my brother from AMRI, Salt lake and shifted him to RTIIC although he was in the ICCU of AMRI at that point of time as I was sure he would be killed if he remained there.
I would request the W.Bengal government to invite information from the general public who feel they were mistreated at any of the AMRI hospitals. I can assure that the complaints against AMRI would run into more than a thousand pages.