JJ Hospital still lacks trauma care centre

The Dockyard Road building collapse on Friday once again brought to light the lack of trauma management centre at the city’s largest health facility – state-run Sir JJ Hospital. Most of those injured in the building collapse were admitted to the hospital.

Doctors at the hospital admitted that they find it difficult to provide comprehensive emergency medical services to patients suffering from such trauma. The state government’s priorities seem to be skewed, said the doctors, pointing to the recent grant of Rs600 crore to build a 19-storey super-specialty wing in the hospital campus, while permission has yet to be granted for a Rs45-crore trauma care centre.“We have already approached the National Rural Health Mission to set up a trauma centre at our hospital. Our Rs45-crore project proposal is pending since February 2011,” Dr TP Lahane, dean of Sir JJ Hospital, said.

Stressing on the need to build such a centre, a senior surgeon at JJ Hospital said, “A trauma centre is not merely an emergency room. International guidelines stipulate that the centre should have a qualified trauma surgeon, a radiologist, a physician and an anaesthesiologist, apart from being manned 24x7 by trained paramedics”. “CT scan, MRI and X-ray facilities should also be available 24 hours,” the surgeon added.

The Lokmanya Tilak Memorial General Hospital has a 15-bed trauma care centre.
However, it was built 25 years ago and is not equipped to handle a large number of complicated cases.