Pulayanarkotta hospital’s extra beds to be used by MCH patients

Kerala Health Minister K. Muraleedharan has said that the patients who get admitted to Thiruvananthapuram Medical College but who are forced to occupy floor space because of the shortage of hospital beds, will now be accommodated at the Chest Diseases hospital at Pulayanarkotta.

The decision to accommodate the additional in-patients in MCH at Pulayanarkotta was taken at a meeting convened by the Minister, in which senior Health and Medical Education department officials and the administrative heads of various hospitals in the district had participated.

The Chest Diseases hospital at Pulayanarkotta, which has over 500 beds, will be useful in accommodating the patients who flood the MCH during the epidemic season, it was pointed out. The decision is also being taken as part of the government’s general policy that patients should not have to lie on the floor, Mr. Muraleedharan said.

He directed the General Hospital (GH) administration to ready a canteen facility in the hospital without delay. The meeting took some crucial decisions to augment the development of GH Thiruvananthapuram, including offering 24x7 care in many medical departments such as Cardiology, so that the overcrowding in MCH can be reduced.

The Minister said that a new CT Scan machine would be installed at the GH, with the help of Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology. The space rent and power utilisation charges would be borne by RGCB. The scans would be offered to people at a much lower rate than is charged by other private diagnostic centres and a certain amount per scan taken, would be given to the hospital development society.