BABA RAGHAV DAS MEDICAL COLLEGE GORAKHPUR

Baba Raghav Das Medical College, located in Gorakhpur, India, is run by the government of Uttar Pradesh. Established in 1969, it was initially affiliated with Gorakhpur University and developed as a center for treating mosquito-borne diseases. The affiliated Nehru Hospital has 700 beds plus 108 in an Epidemic Ward. In 2014, the Union Health Ministry announced plans to modernize the institute into a super-speciality facility comparable to AIIMS. The college gained attention when its Government Regional Public Analyst Laboratory discovered excessive MSG in Maggi noodles. Until AIIMS Gorakhpur was established, BRD was the only tertiary referral hospital in a 300 km² area, treating over 60% of India's encephalitis cases, with 2,500–3,000 patients annually, mostly during August–October. Between 1978 and 2011, more than 30,000 encephalitis deaths were recorded there, including 1,500 in 2005, mostly children. From 2012–2017, over 3,000 children died at the hospital, with allegations of underreporting and negligence. The institution has faced repeated accusations of corruption, mismanagement, and inadequate funding, including malfunctioning equipment, overcrowded ICUs, and insufficient medicine budgets, despite periodic political attention and promises of improvement.