Hek reviews NEIGRIHMS’ preparedness to tackle COVID-19

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMay 12, 2021

Health Minister Alexander Laloo Hek on Wednesday visited the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health & Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) to review the preparedness of the hospital to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

Speaking to reporters, Hek has expressed satisfaction about the hospital’s preparedness to deal with the situation.

“The state government is ready to support and cooperate with NEIGRIHMS hospital if they need any help. We have also asked the hospital to ensure that it caters to all patients,” he said.

When asked, NEIGRIHMS Director Dr Prithwis Bhattacharya said that the main challenge faced by the hospital is running both COVID and non-COVID wards together using the same manpower.

“Same type of services is continuing but the number of people is less in terms of human resources, that is the doctors, nurses, wardboys…,” he said.

“These are the types of challenges which we had been preparing last time so we trained other doctors and nurses from other parts of the hospital even the pre-clinical /para-clinical laboratory services they were trained in managing COVID ICU patients

when this came up we called upon their services, gave them refresher training and now they are working with us,” he informed.

Dr Bhattacharya informed that the hospital is having more than 70-77 ventilators adding “some more, we will be getting (very soon).”

Asked, the Director said that at present there is no shortage of oxygen in the hospital.

“Our liquid oxygen tank capacity is adequate for now,” he added.

Admitting the virulence of this virus is high, Director of Health Services (MI) Dr Aman War said people are getting the infection and at the same time there is healing as the state is having a high recovery rate with 17354 persons have recovered so far.

“..The Virulence of this virus is high, and that is why many are getting positive. I will say one thing, we are concentrating only on the number of new cases, active cases all this time. We have forgotten the number of recoveries,” Dr. War said.

He maintained that the people are concentrating only on the number of recent cases while the number of recoveries is ignored.

“… so the message now is there is hope at the same time people are getting the infection and at the same time there is healing,” he added.

Stating that the virus can be fought by following health protocols such as self-lockdown, the Medical officer said, “The most important thing is self lockdown , stay at home , let this go and we will see after 10 days what happens.”