Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital to provide robotic surgery free for poor patients nationwide

The hospital, which is under the ministry of health and family welfare, is also the first central government hospital in India to start this robot surgery facility for all poor patients for free. 

Union minister of health and family welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Saturday dedicated the robotic surgery facility in the Safdarjung Hospital to the nation on Saturday.

Robotic surgery has the advantage of providing minimally invasive surgery, reducing significantly the morbidity and mortality of critically ill, cancer and kidney failure patients. The robotic system provides 7 degrees of freedom, 3-D vision, 10 times magnification and better dissection with more precision. The operating time also decreases resulting in improvement in turnover of patients and decrease in waiting list of patients for surgery significantly.

Already 25 surgeries have been performed using robotic system, including prostate, kidney, bladder cancers and advanced reconstructive surgeries by Dr Anup Kumar, head of the department (HOD), urology and renal transplant at SJH and VMMC.

SJH has dedicated 21 modular operation theatres, including 24x7 two dedicated renal transplant OTs and a dedicated robotic OT for kidney failure and urology cancers, for poor patients of India.

Dr Harsh Vardhan said the department of urology and renal transplant of SJH has already started the first international live 3-D laparoscopic surgeries webcast, showing complex uro-oncology and reconstructive surgeries, twice in a month. This has been integrated with the e-health online education programme of ministry of health and family welfare, which is now connected with 52 medical colleges across India. This is the first such programme in urology in India. The department is going to start international live webcast of robotic surgeries from the second week of November. A national robotic training centre has also been set up for training of young doctors.

Union health minister congratulated the entire team of SJH headed by Dr Sunil Gupta, medical superintendent, SJH, for providing this facility free of cost for poor patients. He further said that this is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of making world class infrastructure and world class expertise accessible to poor Indian population.