National highways passing through Jharkhand will soon be made ready to address the need of trauma care to victims of accidents on the roads that are known for better and fast riding conditions with the exception of few stretches. To provide the timely medical attention and save life, the State Government is likely to setup trauma centres on the National Highways passing through the tribal land.
The announcement was made by Chief Minister Raghubar Das recently at the inaugural function of CT scan and MRI unit at Jamshedpur. The CM also assured a medical centre at Ranchi which will be patterned Jamshedpur Accident Response and Medical Assistance, a joint venture of Tata Steel, Medica Group and Jamshedpur police.
“The trauma centres are most likely to be based on the existing facility at Nagar Utari and Bahragora. The location will be decided by a team of experts. However, there are few things that need to be addressed simultaneously,” said Director-in-Chief, Sumant Mishra. Notably, the trauma centre at Baharagora in East Singhbhum and the another at Nagar Utari in Garhwa, close to NH-75 were setup in 2013 to provide timely relief to victims of accident on NH.
Significanlty, there are plans to setup nearly 11 centres for six NH, measuring around 2000-km, connecting different parts of Jharkhand and providing connectivity to the other parts of the country. “There are lot of things to be decided for these trauma centres like what will be the mode of operation and whether to outsource the activity or run it on part time mode besides kind of equipment needed. We will also figure out the type of specialist to station at the trauma centres,” maintained Mishra.
Notwithstanding the ambition the directorate of Health has a daunting task of overcoming the biggest challenge of creating human resource to run the facilities that are likely to come up on the highways. The other challenges are infrastructure and purchase of equipments to make the installations functional in all respects.
According to an unverified estimate, road accidents in Jharkhand jumped by 13 per cent between 2003 and 2012 while as 2011 registered a staggering 2,167 number of road accidents. Incidentally, Government of India has given emphasis to setting up trauma centres under the 12th Plan (2012-2017) to address rising road accidents.
According to a report prepared by the transport research wing under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for 2010, says that NH accounted for 30 per cent of total road accidents of which 36 per cent of cases resulted in the death of a victim and State highways accounted for 24.5 per cent of total accidents causing death of 27.3 per cent people in 2010.