Cancer therapy machine stalls at Chandigarh hospital, repair agency in containment zone

CHANDIGARH: Cancer patients at Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, can't receive radiation therapy because a Cobalt-60 machine for this purpose is dysfunctional and the repair agency is in a Covid-19 containment zone of Delhi.
The hospital receives 50 to 60 cancer patients every day. Their suffering was put recently on the Prime Minister’s grievance portal, after which officials had asked the college to respond and resolve the issue.The machine is 17 years old and its annual maintenance contract is up to May 2021.
It broke down in March and was given a quick fix. It stalled again a month ago and since then is out of operation. GMCH-32 director principal Dr B S Chavan said: “This week, the agency is sending over another engineer by road from Patna to fix the machine. We are also trying to buy a new one worth Rs 4 crore but there are budget restrictions.”
Sources in the hospital said the complaint had reached the company two months ago and the medical college had even made arrangements for the travel and stay of the engineer. An official in the GMCH-32 said “Two years ago, the hospital had asked for a replacement machine but the request went unanswered.”
In 2018, the World Health Organization counted nearly 11.6 lakh new cancer cases and 7,84,800 cancer deaths in the country. “The mortality rate of Covid-19 is only around 3% but 8-lakh people in the country die of cancer every year. Referring these patients to other centres is inconvenient,” said a member of the faculty at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. The GMCH refers these patients to the PGI in the absence of the machine. The relative of a cancer patient said: “We have been consulting the GMCH doctors for long and now have to show all the previous records to a new doctor.”