Trauma care was the difference in Dipna Karmakar surviving and Saheli Roy dying after accidents on EM Bypass within three months of each other.

Dipna, 20, was riding pillion with a friend on March 8 when a CTC bus hit the two-wheeler, throwing her off the seat. The first-year engineering student was taken to a nearby private hospital with flesh hanging loose from her left thigh and head and internal injuries.

“She was bleeding profusely and her haemoglobin level had dropped alarmingly. Her pelvic bone was almost in pieces and there were serious injuries to her urethra and urinary bladder,” recalled S.B. Purkayastha, the CEO of Ruby General Hospital, where she was admitted.

Dipna survived because a team of trauma care specialists was at hand to attend to her, unlike when airline employee Saheli was taken to NRS Hospital instead of Apollo Gleneagles, the hospital nearest to the site where the Deccan car she was in met with an accident on June 14.

While Dipna was given 16 units of blood and operated on, Saheli lay bleeding in hospital for two hours before a general surgeon examined her. She died.

Dipna, discharged from hospital on Sunday, has begun walking with a stick.

NRS is not the only hospital without a trauma care unit. None of state-run hospitals in the city has one, despite the government promising to tie up with private hospitals that have such units.

According to experts in critical care, the hour after a major road accident is the “golden period” when intervention by specialist surgeons is a must. A full-fledged trauma care unit should ideally have neuro, orthopaedic, general and plastic surgeons.

In Saheli’s case, neither a neuro nor an orthopaedic surgeon was called despite her having head and spine injuries.

“The government has the resources. What is required is proper planning and infrastructure. A public-private partnership was planned two years ago to set up trauma care units,” a senior health department official said.

Director of health services Sanchita Bakshi said implementation of the plan had been “deferred”, not shelved. “We are setting up our own trauma care units in Kharagpur, Burdwan and SSKM,” she said. But sources said work on the proposed trauma care unit at SSKM wouldn’t start this year.