Patna: Bihar’s premier medical institution, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), will soon have additional 20 bed intensive care unit (ICU) in the critical care medicine department.
Responding to the IGIMS’s long-pending demand, the state health department has sanctioned a sum of ₹3.37 crore on building the additional ICU in the critical care medicine department, which is at present has only 10-bed compartment to treat critical patients.
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Medical superintendent of IGIMS Manish Mandal said that the institute had earmarked the place for building the additional ICU in the super specialty hospital on priority basis in keeping with growing rush of patients in the department. “We are trying to launch construction of the additional ICU to provide efficient treatment to critical patients suffering from diseases related to kidney, heart, liver, etc,” said Mandal.
Currently, the IGIMS is the only medical institution in the state to have the ICU facility in the critical care medicine unit. Officials said that there are very few hospital in the country to have the ICU in the same department.
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Executive director of the Bihar health societies Sanjay Kumar Singh said that the health department has begun construction of ICU in nine medical colleges under the Emergency COVID Response Package-2 (ECRP-2) scheme. The Central government has conceptualized the scheme to strengthen the health systems further and support the states to manage the second wave and any future upsurge.
“So far, the Bihar health societies has floated tenders to construct ICU in four hospitals, while tenders for the rest are in the process. The IGIMS has been sanctioned an amount of ₹16.85 lakh for each bed in the ICU,” he added.
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However, it is also interesting to see how the IGIMS manages to get the environmental clearance for the state level environmental impact assessment authority (Seiaa), which had categorically stated that the institute had exhausted the permissible land for construction in proportionate to the existing green cover in its premises.
