As the country grapples with COVID-19, at least 30 newly developed Super Speciality Blocks (SSBs) at various Government Medical Colleges (GMCs) across the country proved helpful as dedicated facilities for treating coronavirus patients.
Adding up to 8443 hospital beds, including 1600 ICU beds, and 938 high-end ventilators, these SSBs gave an immense boost to health care infrastructure at the time of COVID-19 pandemic.
Under the Pradhan Mantra Swasthya Suraksha Yojna (PMSSY), new AIIMS and SSBs were being created in the government medical colleges to increase the availability of tertiary healthcare infrastructure in different parts of the country.
"When this covid19 crisis started, the Central government directed all the government medical colleges to prepare a dedicated block for the treatment of coronavirus patients. As these SSBs were newly constructed and its infrastructure was in place, hence, for us these Super Speciality Blocks have turned out to be quite handy for setting up COVID-19 hospitals in GMCs across the country," said a senior official at the Union health ministry.
"About 20 such SSBs are already pressed into service as COVID-19 hospitals in different GMCs in 8 states. 5 of these SSBs are in Uttar Pradesh while Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan have three each and West Bengal has two. Gujarat, Karnataka and Punjab have one each," he said.
"In addition, another 10 SSB projects are very near to completion and are being contemplated for use as COVID-19 facilities. 4 out of these are in the state of Maharashtra while 2 are in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. However, Assam, Haryana and Karnataka have one each," he added.
He said that it is also pertinent to note that the new AIIMS established under the PMSSY scheme have been geared themselves up for the fight against coronavirus.
"The first six functional AIIMS, set up at Rishikesh, Jodhpur, Patna, Bhopal, Raipur (Chhattisgarh) and Bhubneshwar set up dedicated COVID-19 blocks with total 1,050 isolation beds and 190 ICU beds," said the official adding that these institutes are also in readiness to add up 700 more dedicated coronavirus beds if the situation would demand.
PMSSY scheme is a flagship scheme of the central government launched by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003. So far, approximately 22 new AIIMS and about 75 GMCs upgradation projects have been taken up under the scheme.
( With inputs from ANI )