Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan today inaugurated the newly constructed Burns and Plastic Surgery Block of AIIMS, New Delhi and dedicated it to Sushruta, the Father of Plastic Surgery. Speaking on the occasion, Dr Harsh Vardhan said that this Block is equipped to deal with approximately 15 thousand burn emergencies and five thousand burn admissions a year. He said, it can deal with mass casualties efficiently by converting the patient receiving area itself into an emergency ward as per need. 

He said, integration of this  block with the Trauma Centre of AIIMS will provide easy assistance to the trauma team in no time. He said, these steps will help reduce deaths of burn patients and also reduce the deformities in survivors.  

Dr Harsh Vardhan further said, burn injury is one of the biggest causes of workforce loss and this is an issue of concern for a rapidly developing economy like India. He said, India has as many as 70 lakh burn injuries annually with mortality rate as high as 1.4 lakhs per year and an additional 2.4 lakh patients end up with severe deformities. The Health Minister said, the new Burns and Plastic Surgery Block has been conceived with the vision of providing state-of-the-art care in the field of burns management and research.