Even as swine flu scare has put State Government on its toes, preparation at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) to deal with the pandemic is far from satisfactory for serious cases of the infection. The institution, however, has earmarked a separate ward for suspects of the deadly of virus H1N1.
As the cases of swine flu started rising Jharkhand Government set up an isolation ward at RIMS in Ranchi and similar effort was made at other Government run colleges in other parts of the State. Nonetheless, shifting the lone patient tested positive in Ranchi to RIMS appears to be a remote possibility given the inadequate infrastructure at the medical college.
“No the patient that has been tested positive as the reports say has not been moved here. So far we admitted only two suspects and medical examination of those two for swine flu was negative. One has been discharged while other will be discharged soon,” said a staff deputed at the isolation ward at RIMS.
The isolation ward at RIMS is devoid of equipments that are needed to keep a patient on life support system in extreme cases, said a source at RIMS. Notably, the lone case so far in Ranchi is said to be in critical condition is reportedly on ventilator and due to absence of ventilator she cannot be shifted to RIMS.
Health services authorities have finally woken to the necessity of life support system as the lone confirmed case could not be shifted to RIMS due to lack of infrastructure. The Directorate on Tuesday asked all medical colleges to equip isolation wards with ventilators.
“We have written letters to all medical colleges to place a dedicated ventilator in the isolation ward,” said Director of state Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (ISDP) Dr Ramesh Prasad who is also a nodal doctor for the purpose in Jharkhand.
State Government has also setup isolation wards at several hospitals at all the sub-divisions and districts, besides the three medical college hospitals in the state to provide medical assistance to patients tested positive. As many as 25 isolation units have been set up for Swine flu across the state at 22 Sadar Hospitals and three Medical Colleges. Medical staffs at different hospitals have been trained to handle such cases and arrangements were also made to send suspected blood samples to Kolkata, Pune and Delhi for pathological test.
As many as 100 Viral Transport Media (VTM) kits have been distributed among districts and demand of another 100 such kits have been raised by the Directorate of Health to distribute in the State.