Trauma care centres to dot highways

 Published on  4/14/2006   
V V Balakrishna

Hyderabad, April 12: Accident victims, if alive, can breathe easy with trauma centres coming up along the highways soon.

Thanks to the dawn of wisdom, the State health department has realised that accident victims need immediate medicare for survival. About 30 trauma care centres will come up on the national and state highways where casualty rates are high.

Emergency medicare facilities are available at the moment only at government general hospitals.

But, several district headquarter hospitals situated on important highways are lacking facilities to provide emergency aid, resulting in growing number of fatalities. If a person is injured in a road mishap at Ongole, he has to be shifted to the Guntur Govt General Hospital where ICU facilities are available. The critically injured man, in other words, has to survive the ordeal of travelling a 100 km distance from Ongole to Guntur.

Doctors say that sometimes it may prove fatal if immediate medicare is not provided to accident victims.

Realising this, the Andhra Pradesh Vidya Vidhana Parishad (APVVP) proposed to set up 30 trauma care centres at important towns on highways, where the number of injured in accidents is more than 10,000 and casualties are around 400 per year.

The first trauma care centre of APVVP will be coming up at Nellore within a month. Six more will come up this year at Kalwakurthy, Badepalli (Mahaboobnagar), Suryapet (Nalgonda), and Uravakonda, Gooty and Tadipatri (Anantapur).

‘‘After obtaining feedback from the Nellore trauma care centre, we will increase the number to 30,’’ said A Rohini, equipment maintenance engineer of APVVP.

Each trauma care centre would have one CT scan, ultra sound scanner, oxygen and all such equipment needed for intensive care units (ICU). One ambulance, equipped with a doctor and a nurse, will also be provided to shift victims from the accident spot to trauma care centre said. Each trauma care centre will have seven beds.

Once the centres are established, APVVP will hire anesthetists on contract basis for round-the-clock services.

The Nellore trauma care centre, which will be inaugurated by Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy soon, has been set up at a cost of Rs 2.2 crore.

Though the proposal to set up trauma care centres had been sent to Union government three years ago, it was materialised only this year.

The delay escalated the estimated project cost of each centre from Rs 1.5 crore to around Rs 2.5 crore.

The APVVP need to construct a building for trauma care units within the estimated cost. As funds are insufficient, officials will provide space in the existing APVVP hospital buildings.