Trichy government hospital set to get exclusive burns ward

The long wait for a full-fledged burns ward at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital here could soon end. The visit of a team of doctors from New Delhi on Saturday has almost confirmed that an exclusive facility to treat burns patients will come up at the hospital, one of two government facilities in the state to get it, under the National Programme for Prevention of Burn Injuries (NPPBI).

The team of doctors, which went round the existing burns ward and the yet-to-function department of plastic surgery at the Rs 55-crore multi specialty block, found that the facilities were inadequate.

"The purpose was to ascertain the conditions at the existing burns ward in order to sanction an exclusive facility under NPPBI," said Dr Lalit K Makhija, consultant plastic surgeon at RML l in New Delhi and a member of the team.The central team has asked the MGMGH administration to allot 468 sq m of land for construction of the exclusive facility at an estimated outlay of Rs 3 crore under the central programme.

Several senior doctors at MGMGH told the visiting team that presently burns victims were suffering as full-fledged treatment was not available and that hundreds of patients would benefit once the new ward was opened.

Dr Makhija said that about seven million burns cases were reported across the country every year and most of them were a result of domestic accidents. "Many people still do not know how to use stoves for cooking so they suffer from burn injuries. However, here [in Tamil Nadu] we have found a different story and found that self immolation is very common. I am going to try and do something for treatment as well as prevention. We can prevent self-immolation," said Dr Makhija.

The objective of the programme is to reduce burns injuries. Dr Makhija said they would take efforts to bring down the number of burns cases by 10% to 20% in the next ten years. "First we provide treatment till they recover. At the same time we provide counselling for prevention. There are a lot of education programmes that will be undertaken alongside," said Makhija.

Asked whether the new burns ward should be in a separate block, he said, "We told them [doctors at MGMGH] to allot a place for the construction of the new block for burns treatment." He added that even if they was a building, they would conduct checks to see if would meet the standards of the programme. "If so, the exclusive burns ward can function there," said Dr Makhija