Has Mukul misled House?
TURA: A state-of- the- art intensive care unit in Tura Civil Hospital was inaugurated over a year ago but the failure on the part of the government to appoint specialists to man the highly sophisticated unit has caused it to remain non-functional.
Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma had on Wednesday last claimed on the floor of the assembly that there was no ICU unit in Tura even though the government has been providing adequate funding for health services.
Interestingly, it was none other than Dr Sangma himself who inaugurated the ICU on December 17, 2012- a month before elections to Meghalaya assembly was announced.
The plaque bearing Dr. Sangma’s name with the date of inauguration stands testimony to the establishment of the ICU in Tura.
The ICU was constructed under the North Eastern Council (NEC) scheme totalling Rs. 2.46 crore of which ten percent was borne by the state government.
Some doctors at Tura civil hospital had objected against the hurried inauguration of the unit as the government had not appointed any trained specialists to run the 24-hour special care centre.
The eight-bed ICU, located on the third floor of the Tura Civil Hospital, is equipped with three highly sophisticated automatic ventilators, including a hi-frequency ventilator, for life support.
There is also a separate room in the ICU for treating patients with infectious diseases.
The entire ICU is connected to a direct central oxygen supply system located in the ground floor of the hospital and also boasts of a generator for power back up.
But what has caused the sophisticated centre to remain idle is the lack of specialists and super specialists.
One of the most important specialists required for an ICU is an anesthetist who never got appointed for close to a year.
It was only sometime ago that the Meghalaya Government had forwarded the names of three doctors from Tura Civil Hospital to head to NEIGHRIMS for a month long training in running of an ICU.
The three doctors who were selected by the government were Dr. Rakran Ch Marak (Anesthesist), Dr Bandi K Sangma and Dr Walesa N Sangma.
However, medical sources have revealed that the Director of NEIGRIHMS had reportedly questioned the government decision to allow the selected doctors to train for only one month when the minimum required duration to train in the running of the ICU is three months.
A letter in this regard was sent to the government from NEIGRIHMS a few weeks ago.
One anesthetist from the Tura Civil Hospital reportedly completed the one month training in NEIGRIHMS but allegedly never got around to treating a single patient at the ICU which was also barely functional at that point of time.
“There are currently eight nurses who have been trained to provide medical assistance to the doctors at the ICU but they have been made to do normal nursing duty in the hospital because of the non-functional ICU at Tura Civil Hospital,” informed some of the medics from Garo Hills.
“More than three doctors and eight nurses will be required to man the ICU if it ever gets operational because it is meant to be running 24 hours,” added another retired medical expert in Tura.