A robotic surgery facility was opened for public at the Centre-run Safdarjung Hospital on November 2. According to an official statement, Safdarjung Hospital is the first central government-run healthcare institution to have this latest facility.

Robotic surgery has the advantage of providing minimally invasive surgery, reducing significantly morbidity and mortality of critically ill, cancer and kidney failure patients. The operating time also decreases resulting in improvement in turnover of patients and decrease in waiting list of patients for surgery significantly, it said. Already 25 surgeries have been done using robotic facility by Anup Kumar, Head of Department, Urology and Renal Transplant, at the hospital.

The Union Health Minister, who inaugurated the facility, said that the Department of Urology and Renal Transplant 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 the Ministry of Health which is now connected with 52 medical colleges across India. This is the first such program 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, he said.