octors and patients at Delhi's government hospitals have challenged former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's claim that these have seen a massive improvement during his 49-day tenure. Kejriwal in a recent interview had said that administration in hospitals had improved as corruption had gone down and that expensive antibiotics that were not accessible earlier, and other facilities, are now easily available. These correspondents visited various hospitals on Wednesday and interacted with patients and hospital staff.

Siddarth Ramji, medical superintendent at Lok Nayak Hospital in Central Delhi said, "I don't think hospitals have seen any meteoric changes the former CM is claiming. Things are still as they were before the AAP government came to power." "The hospital is facing a shortage of personnel in some departments which is a long-term problem and can be solved only by the government as recruitment is under its control," he said. On the availability of antibiotics, Ramji said that the hospitals get certain drugs from the Central Procurement Agency (CPA), so, all essential drugs have been available at the hospitals anyway, Kejriwal had nothing to do with it.

Several patients receiving treatment at the hospital said that they had not witnessed any changes in the functioning of the hospitals in the last few weeks. Namit Kumar from Shamli district in Uttar Pradesh said, "I have been admitted in G.B. Pant Hospital for the last two months. I have not witnessed any changes. "

A senior resident surgeon at Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital in Pitampura claimed that the hospital functioning had actually worsened in the last few weeks. "There has been a scarcity of basic medicines like Ciplox, which is a very basic antibiotic. I don't know if this has anything to do with the AAP government."

Dr Harsh Vardhan, Delhi BJP chief, said that the situation in government hospitals had worsened under the Arvind Kejriwal-led government. "When Kejriwal was the Chief Minister, we only heard news about Aam Aadmi Party volunteers randomly barging into different hospitals and harassing the staff and patients under the pretence of supervision," he said. Dr Vardhan, a former Health Minister of Delhi, also said that the process of medicine procurement has been upset. "Procurement of medicines is a long process. The model that I had set up in my tenure was called the 'Delhi Model' by the World Health Organisation. But now this has been upset completely and it will take 6-8 months to be streamlined again," he said.

Satyendra Jain, the Health Minister during the AAP tenure, said, I took necessary steps to fix these problems and got a positive feedback from patients." When these correspondents said that the feedback they had received was the opposite of what he was claiming, he said, "It is likely that you have met a different set of people. The people I interacted with were very happy with our government's work."