AIIMS High

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences lives by the mantra of quality care at aff ordable rates. And, thanks to a dedicated team of doctors, professors and researchers, it retains its top position in the country

- Namita Kohli

Between life and death, there would have been only three months.In early 2018, Sharon Santan Cabra, 25, was told that his heart was working at only 20 per cent of its capacity. The family had known that his heart was weak since 2005. But he was managing, with medication. In all these years, Cabra, a resident of Gurugram (the family shifted from Karnataka for his treatment a few years ago), had tried several super-speciality hospitals in the vicinity, too. “But, I would feel better only when I would come to AIIMS,” he says. “At one hospital in Gurugram, they could not even diagnose my problem properly. They asked me to get a lung transplant done.”

At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, Cabra was advised a heart transplant surgery. In a country such as India, with one of the lowest rates of organ donation, a donor heart does not come easy. And when it does, the transplant must be done within four hours. Luckily for Cabra, a donor heart was available at the trauma centre at AIIMS in April. From there, a team of cardiac surgeons took over. Today, Cabra says he feels good, and is looking forward to making a good life for himself in Delhi.

Cabra’s is one of the 66 heart transplants done at AIIMS, since it made history for the first heart transplant in India in 1994. Today, 62 years after it was founded, AIIMS is counting many firsts, including first combined pancreatic and kidney transplant and the first robot-assisted urological surgery. And, all this at affordable rates. No wonder, AIIMS, Delhi, tops the all-India list of THE WEEK-Hansa Research Best Hospitals Survey 2018 , followed by Christian Medical College, Vellore, and Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. AIIMS, Delhi, also ranks first in seven specialisations—cardiology, ophthalmology, diabetes care, paediatrics, orthopaedics, neurology and infertility treatment.