The Hindu : Karnataka News : Hospitals well prepared for calamitous situation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 03, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Hospitals well prepared for calamitous situation

By Sahana Charan

BANGALORE, JAN. 2. A tsunami hitting Bangalore is not even a distant possibility as the city is not in the coastal belt. But earthquakes are not ruled out. Is the city prepared to react to a natural calamity? Are the hospitals here equipped to deal with a large-scale epidemic, a natural or a man-made tragedy?

According to health professionals, the city's hospitals can handle a major disaster where many lives may be at stake.

The Comprehensive Trauma Consortium (CTC), formed a few years ago to deal with medical emergencies, has formulated the "Initiative for Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response" (IEMPRESS) jointly with the Rajiv Gandhi University for Health Sciences and experts in the field, to support prompt response to calamities. CTC networks around 25 city hospitals.

According to N.K. Venkataramana, neurosurgeon and Project Co-ordinator for CTC, IEMPRESS recently came out with a Hospital Contingency Plan, which is being adopted by nine zonal hospitals in the city. The plan will be adopted to suit the needs of each hospital depending on the number of beds and other factors. "The plan to manage disaster-related emergencies will soon be extended to 15 hospitals and at a later phase to all 25 hospitals in the consortium.

"We are also creating a database about these hospitals — number of beds, staff strength, facilities available, infrastructure and every other detail. All this data will be available at the CTC control room," Dr. Venkataramana said.

He told The Hindu that the database will be ready in a week. All staff members of these hospitals, from the doctors to the security personnel, are trained on their roles and responsibilities during a large scale emergency.

The Sagar Apollo Hospital here has made arrangements to deal with a disaster situation. The hospital in conjunction with the National Network of Emergency Services has introduced an emergency number (1066), which will be formally launched on January 10, A.N. Venkatesh, In-charge of Emergency Medical Services at Sagar Apollo, said.

This number is in use in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad and a few other cities and networks emergency services across the country.

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