The Bidhannagar Subdivisional Hospital will soon get a blood bank. This is one of the significant additions to the government-run healthcare unit in DD Block.
“The hospital was neglected for long. We are trying to bring about a lot of improvements,” superintendent Partha Pratim Guha told The Telegraph Salt Lake.
Construction of the blood bank is almost complete on the ground floor of the building that houses the staff quarters, next to the Fair Price Medicine Shop. “The health department has placed orders for high-end equipment. Since we have more than requisite space for the blood bank, we are making provisions for component separation too.” For this, a separate sanitised room is being built to store platelets, concentrated red blood cells, fresh frozen plasma etc. It will be a walk-in cooler, of about 80 sq ft area, where a temperature of 2-6°C will be maintained.
The blood bank will help cut down on vital time wasted by patients’ kin in commuting. “It takes hours to return with blood after going to the nearest blood bank, place a requisition and wait for the cross-matching. Since most residents of Salt Lake are elderly folk, this will also be a relief for the next of kin of patients,” he pointed out.
The health department has also sanctioned the setting up of digital X-ray and CT scan machines. “We are trying to go for a public-private partnership model. The facilities will be free for patients.”
Tie-ups are in place under the central government’s Janani-Sishu Suraksha Karyakaram and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana. “If our store does not stock the prescribed medicines, we will pay for medicines bought from specified private stores. Even for diagnostics we are going for tie-ups with private centres for tests which we cannot provide.”
Another development the superintendent is excited about is the emergency observation ward. Since the hospital does not have the bed strength to merit an intensive care unit or a high dependency unit (HDU), this is the closest that it can get to handling critical patients. “We are a 100-bed hospital. So we do not have the manpower for a full-fledged ICU. But our emergency observation ward will be fitted with enough high-end equipment to be of the same level as a basic HDU. This way, we can manage many more patients without having to refer them to Nilratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital.”
The ward will be an eight-bed facility, with space for four male and four female patients. It will be fitted with cardiac monitor, non-invasive bipap ventilator, nebuliser, defibrillator, infusion pump and ECG machine. “Often we cannot make out what is wrong with a new patient. In the absence of a monitoring facility, so long we were forced to refer them elsewhere. Now we can assess the condition of most and treat them ourselves.”
Funds have also been sanctioned for a fire detection and prevention system. Hydrants and hosepipes are being fitted and a water tank is being built. In the next phase, automatic sprinklers and fire safety doors, which can keep out flames and smoke from common access areas like stairs, will be installed.
