According to the wikipedia page of AIMS the hospital was inaugurated in 1998. It serves thousands of patients. These are for instance the numbers for 2010 :
Let's go nine years back in time to compare these numbers with the ones of 2001 :
- Total beds: 1450
- Total inpatients in 2010: 54,800
- Total outpatients in 2010: 6,15,000
Let's go nine years back in time to compare these numbers with the ones of 2001 :
"100,000 people get free treatment every year at their 925-bed Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi"In 2001 AIMS had less beds so the number of inpatients was necessarily much lower than 54,000. Yet, the institution supposedly treated 100,000 people for free! It is impossible, unless they are outpatients. But the inherent kind of care can only be basic. We guess that neither a telemedecine van, an ayurvedic clinic or a local dispensary are suitable to perform high-risk surgery or long-lasting interventions. Only a hospital can deliver advanced care.
Newspapers and brochures seem to be filled with such shortcuts that appear to be lies.
If 100,000 poor people have really been treated in 2001, then most of them were necessarily outpatients. Many of them may have been cared of by local dispensaries that have agreements with bigger institutions, AIMS being only one of them.
And here is the lie, coming from the mouth of Mata Amritanandamayi herself. Indeed, helping the needy was supposed to be the one and only motivation for her to build a hospital :
"She saw that while the poor did receive basic medical care through various charitable clinics, advanced care was beyond their dreams"If poor people are mainly outpatients then they mainly get basic care. Thanks to Amma's efforts, advanced care is still beyond their dreams.