AP Govt funding assured to SVIMS

Tirupati: The Special Chief Secretary, Department of Health, Medicine and Family Welfare Poonam Malakondaiah has assured the required funding for SVIMS to pursue excellence and echoed the concept of strengthening health systems by collaboration. She has participated in the 26th Foundation Day celebrations of SVIMS held at Sri Padmavathi Auditorium of the Institute on Tuesday.

Speaking at the workshop held on the occasion, SVIMS Director Dr TS Ravikumar has outlined the key performing indicators of SVIMS. They are efficiency, efficacy, effectiveness, growth, market share and financials. In his talk on ‘Road Map Update’, he underlined the progress made in each of the Institutes of Excellence: Cardiac sciences, cancer and allied sciences, renal sciences, neuro sciences and trauma/emergency care.

On this occasion, Poonam was honoured by SVIMS for the recent SKOCH Awards, making AP the best health system in India. She joined the SVIMS Director and UT Southwestern Collaborators to speak on health innovations being implemented by the AP government.

A talk with demonstration of virtual reality in medicine was given by Associate Professor of Heart Lung disease management Dr John Murala while Dr Vaidehi Kaza, Assistant Medical Director of Lung Transplant at UT Southwestern, USA spoke on modern medical therapy of patients with lung diseases caused by pulmonary hypertension and the role of lung transplantation.

She outlined the UT-SW system approach to managing patients with end stage lung diseases. Heart failure specialist from UT, Southwestern Dr Alpesh Amin appraised on the current management of heart failure, which is the most important cause of hospital admissions. He outlined the collaborative plans for implementing heart failure program at SVIMS. Associate Professor at SVIMS Dr Harikrishna updated the work of Advanced Lung Clinic, which was inaugurated by Dr Vaidehi Kaza in July 2018.

Dr Sreekanth Cheruku, faculty from UT-SW spoke about Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) in improving the outcomes of patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It is expected that SVIMS will receive training and mentoring from UT-SW Medical Centre to start ECMO programme in ICU. In the evening, the annual day celebrations of SVIMS were held at Mahati Auditorium in the city in which the Director has presented the annual report for 2018.

He mentioned that the Institute has been performing well in six key performance indicators and revealed that the total hospital death rate was decreased by seven per cent over the previous year and stood at 3.6 percent in 2018.

The Institute has highest student strength of around 2,000 and in terms of community outreach in health care system, no other institute can match SVIMS. It has been the biggest contributor in taking the health care to the poor through NTR Vaidya Seva and provided unreimbursed free care worth about Rs 30 crore during 2018 alone.

Students performed in cultural programmes while medals and prizes were distributed to the students and faculty, who were the winners of various events. Dean P Srinivasa Rao, Dr M Hanumantha Rao, Dr TC Kalawat, Dr Alok Sachan, Dr V Siva Kumar and other dignitaries from UT-Southwestern, USA have participated in the programmes.