kolkata january 28 1983 a marble plaque is laid just opposite the principals office in the oldest medical college of asia by chief minister jyoti basu the stone bears promises of an eightstorey building with preclinical divisions airconditioned classrooms auditoriums four lecture theatres and a librarythe promise is to convert the calcutta medical college into a stateoftheart hospital two years later the pledges are renewed this time they are made in the presence of then president zail singh who promises to intervene for central fundscut to august 2 2003 talks are initiated to upgrade the hospital to aiims standardthe players this time union health minister sushma swaraj and current state chief minister buddhadeb bhattacharjeethe twenty years in between witnessed the death of dreams the foundation stone lying smothered by weeds of neglectfor senior doctors of the hospital it is dj vu one senior doctor hoped on sunday that at least the cardiology gadgets which he had been asking for the past two years would arrivewe cannot conduct a bypass surgery here as there is no equipment the balloon angioplasty unit is also out of order for past two months even angiography unit has breaks down every now and then he claimedeven for some of the routine pathological tests like the sodium potassium or the elisa test patients are required to go to other institutions in fact a proposal was recently mooted to start a private pathological laboratory which will conduct these tests within the campusprincipal jayashri mitra agreed it would have been helpful if we could conduct some of the tests here some commercial agencies had applied for space inside the hospital for starting a laboratory i have forwarded the proposals to the government for approvalcommon procedures like dialysis and kidney transplants were not available at the hospital and equipment worth crores of rupeees and donated by nri doctors were lying defunct mainly due to virtual nonusethe building which housed many of the clinical departments near gate no 3 has now been declared a condemned one the situation is just like the fourth floor of mch building which was renovated a couple of years agohospital superintendent kusum kumar adhikary echoed the chief ministers sentiment by stressing on work culture that is the most important factor with the decision a series of deputations and memorandums will now follow but no one is bothered about improving the work culture he saidaccording to the indian medical association calcutta branch the decision to convert the cmch into an aiims was an appropriate onebut there are too many things to rectify we hope this will bring in funds and these improvements made claimed ima kolkata spokesperson nirmal majiif this does not happen we will be a laughing stock if even common procedures like bone grafting and dialysis remain out of the cmchs capacities he added