Anantapur: Super Specialty hospital to add more Corona facilities

Anantapur: It will take a little more effort to ensure completion of the Rs 150 crore Super Specialty hospital located close to the JNT University. If pressure is applied on the contractor, he can make atleast two floors available for Covid patients hospital.

Instead of putting all efforts on the conversion of a warehouse in Raptadu constituency into a Covid hospital, with lesser effort the Super Specialty hospital can be readied for hosting another Covid hospital.

The Super Specialty hospital has 350 beds, 50 ventilators and 70 cylinders lying idle.

The number of COVID-19 positive cases in Anantapur district crossed the 9,723-mark on Monday from just 734 cases by July 27 and that left the district administration looking for more number of hospital beds.

While the district badly needs good hospital infrastructure, a Union government-sponsored Super Specialty Hospital is being constructed for the past four years, while it should have been handed over by early 2019.

Though Health Minister promised to get the required staff recruited for the new hospital and also for the existing GGH, JUDA house surgeons are not interested to join. The Anantapur Medical College did not have permission for PG courses and the State had not taken sufficient initiative to get them sanctioned from the MCI.

When the first COVID-19 case was detected on March 12 in the district, everyone eyed this facility, but due to sheer lack of coordination between the executing agency HLL Infratech Services Ltd (HITES), Haigreeva Infratech Projects Ltd., Government General Hospital and the Medical College four months of valuable time was lost. Now even to operationalise at least two floors of five planned floors near JNTU Campus, it will take another 15 days, according to the executing agency.

In its absence, several colleges and S K University buildings had been converted into Covid Care Centres and some private hospitals including RDT hospital, Bathalapalli, KIMS Saveera, Divyasri Hospital and Amaravati hospital had been utilised for admitting serious patients in addition to the GGH. The district administration has even proposed converting an under construction warehouse at Raminepalli into a Covid Care Centre, but even that is a Herculean task.

Anantapur Medical College Principal and other officials inspected the Super Specialty hospital buildings and were of the opinion that 36 beds with ventilators and remaining 72 ICU (with oxygen supply) beds could be immediately brought into use temporarily if additional manpower was deployed by the contractor and minor works were finished in first floor.

The centralised air-conditioning work has just started and the self-sustaining sewage treatment plant is yet to be set up in the hospital, which is supposed to be a green field project. Ventilators, patients' beds and oxygen cylinders are in place but some minor works need to be completed.

Praja Science Vedika state president Dr M Suresh Babu has in a press statement appealed to the district administration to focus on making the Super Specialty buildings ready in the interest of increasing number of Covid patients.