Chennai: With a view to meeting the growing demand for beds and reduce the load in government hospitals, schools and colleges in Chennai city will be made as Covid extension centres for treatment with oxygen support.
The makeshift treatment centres will serve as extension centres of the government medical college hospitals.
It will come up in more than ten locations in the city in view of the surge in Covid cases and to provide timely treatment to the patients.
The main aim is to save the precious lives of the people and reduce the fatality rate, HR and CE Minister PK Sekar Babu told reporters.
The ‘Extension Centres’, to be launched in one or two days by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), with support from NGOs, will have dedicated teams of doctors and nurses to provide treatment to COVID-19 patients and save their lives during the pandemic, thereby reducing the load in government tertiary care hospitals.
Several patients have died because of the delay in reaching tertiary care hospitals, as the city’s daily caseload went past the 6,500 mark and the demand for bed with oxygen facility was growing.
To begin with the Don Bosco School at Egmore area in the city will have a 104-bed hospital.
On Sunday, Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi visited a few schools, including the Don Bosco, Egmore where a Covid care ‘extension centre’ of Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, will come up.
While the Corporation will provide beds, oxygen support and other infrastructure for the extension centres, the NGOs will sponsor the team of doctors and nurses, Bedi told reporters.
The Don Bosco Foundation has formed a team of new doctors, consultants and nurses to treat the patients at the hospital to be developed on the school premises at Egmore.
“Today, we went to Don Bosco School where will are opening a 104-bed hospital. The Corporation is giving the beds, infrastructure, the medicine, taking care of the sanitation and other facilities. The Don Bosco Foundation is giving us eight doctors, three consultants and 24 nurses, sponsoring them on their own’, he said.
Beds have already been shifted and the oxygen concentrators will be ready a day or two. We will start the hospial by Wednesday and link it to a medical college as their extension facility,” Gagandeep Singh Bedi said.
In addition to the ‘extension centre’ in Egmore Don Bosco, such centres will be developed at more than ten locations including Nungambakkam, Royapettah and Perambur.
Sekar Babu, who inspected the facility along with Bedi, said the new teams of doctors and nurses by NGOs will get all the support from the government to provide treatment to Covid-19 patients during the pandemic.
Civic officials are coordinating with various agencies to reduce the fatality rate during this pandemic, he added.