“We have only two vehicles to transport patients and a health centre with only two permanent staff members on rolls,” JNU Rector-II Ramadhikari Kumar said. “We have requested the UGC for funds.”

Though the JNU website calls it an “ambulance” service, Kumar said the vehicles are merely “transport vehicles”. He said a request would be made for at least one fully equipped ambulance.

Aishvarya Agrawal, 23, a first-year MTech student of Computational and Systems Biology from the School of Information Technology (SIT), was proclaimed dead on arrival at AIIMS around 11 pm Wednesday.

Students are now seeking a round-the-clock health centre with a doctor on duty and two fully equipped ambulances with paramedical staff. Vikram Singh, research scholar at SIT and among those seeking improvement in health facilities at the premier university, said: “Having a health centre that closes at 9 pm is of no use. Will emergencies not come up at night?”

Senior students said this is not the first such incident at the university. Dean of Schools of Social Sciences Ramprasad Sengupta had to be taken to hospital in a taxi following a heart attack on June 6, 2005 — seniors said the ambulance did not arrive. A research scholar from Brahmaputra Hostel allegedly died in August 2006 due to lack of facilities in the health centre.

A student of the School of Languages died in 2008, senior students said, after he met with an accident in the campus. Reason: lack of proper medical facilities, students said.

The JNU health centre cannot admit patients and is not equipped for emergency, students said. There are almost 10,000 people on JNU campus.