A nurse demonstrates the new unit at TMH on Friday. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Specialised critical care at Jamshedpur’s Tata Main Hospital just got better.

The premier health hub of the city on Friday threw open to the public an upgraded Critical Care Unit (CCU) that officials said had become a necessity in view of the rising number of patients that it received daily.

The upgraded unit, which will come as a life saver to a city that has seen its accident graph go north in the last few years, was inaugurated by Tata Steel managing director H.M. Nerurkar on Friday. A number of doctors, some Tata Steel Workers’ Union members and members of the steel major’s management body were present at the occasion.

A quick round by The Telegraph on Friday showed that the number of beds in the CCU had been more than doubled. The unit, which earlier had 11 CCU beds along with two additional haemodialysis ones, now housed 22 beds with the number of haemodialysis beds being upped to six. The number of beds in the burn care unit too had been jacked up from nine to 14.

Sources said the revamp job at the CCU, which was carried out at a cost of Rs 3.98 crore, will help in providing high-end life support to more number of patients now, an average of 600 of whom flocked the hospital daily.

“The CCU almost always was cent per cent occupied. Yet, with increasing footfall daily, the demands came pouring in. Hence, we had to upgrade it,” said said T.P. Madhusudanan, general manager of medical services, Tata Steel.

The CCU at present is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment that includes ventilators, multi-para monitors, syringe pumps and defibrillators. Apart from this, plans to install echocardiograph (a device putting out 3D image of the heart) facilities and a sleep laboratory is also on the cards.

“We needed to upgrade the facility badly with the kind of pressure the CCU had on it. Saving a life is the unit’s utmost priority,” said Nerurkar, while addressing a gathering after the inauguration.

The CCU unit also conducts a post doctoral course in critical care, which is approved by the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine. At present it has a mortality rate of 20.2 percent, which has been brought down from 45 per cent as in 2002.

“We have a communication room where relatives are updated about the conditions of a patient. This apart we also conduct international and national academic study courses regularly at the health hub,” said S.P. Samaddar, a senior CCU doctor.

P.N. Singh, president of the Tata Workers’ Union said the hospital should invite doctors its contemporaries from foreign countries to conduct their research there.