By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: It is a battle raging for over four months and the end is not in sight as yet. But doctors and medical professionals at the SOA Deemed to be University are determined to fight till victory is achieved.
After swirling through continents infecting nearly two crore people and killing over seven lakh of them, the Coronavirus has taken Odisha in its grip bringing life to a standstill for weeks. Doctors, nurses and paramedics, deployed in four large Covid-19 Hospitals and two Covid Care Centres (CCC) being run by SOA in collaboration with the state government have been doing their utmost to provide the healing touch to the affected patients.
The first standalone Covid-19 Hospital, the biggest in the state with 625 beds including 125 ICU beds—one of the largest in the country— was set up by SOA on April 6 in its own university campus in Bhubaneswar. Two other fully equipped Covid-19 Hospitals with 170 and 150 beds were set up subsequently at Kendrapara and Talcher respectively expanding the scope of treatment for those afflicted with the infection.
The fourth Covid-19 Hospital with 350 beds was set up at Chandpur in Nayagarh district on July 23. In addition, two Covid Care Centres (CCC) at Jamujhari on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar (500 beds) and Jatni (300 beds) also started functioning in July. All the hospitals are fully equipped to deal with the disease including ventilators.
Altogether, the facilities created by SOA provide for over 2100 beds including 157 ICU beds. All the facilities have been running at 80 to 90 per cent occupancy even as the number of positive cases were on the rise. “It is a war and we are proud of our warriors who have been battling the pandemic day and night,” said Prof. Manojranjan Nayak, Founder President of SOA.
“It has not been an easy task as Coronavirus is an unknown quantity and requires knowledge, skill and understanding to deal with the infection,” Dr. Pushparaj Samantasinhar, Medical Superintendent of the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, faculty of medical sciences of the SOA Deemed to be University, which has been running the six facilities, said.
Soon after the Covid-19 Hospital at Bhubaneswar started functioning, there were causes for celebration. Doctors and nurses were jubilant when an 85-year-old woman from Jajpur district weighing only 22 kg, emerged victorious in the grim battle against Covid-19. “Reviving corona patients with co-morbidities has been a tricky proposition but we have been winning these battles as well,” said a doctor.
“A 60-year-old patient admitted into the hospital came to know for the first time that he was highly diabetic. But focused attention on him brought down the sugar level and he was discharged,” he said adding two infants below three years of age infected by the virus also recovered after treatment.The treatment of Covid-19 patients in these hospitals has received a boost with the introduction of plasma therapy.
IMS and SUM Hospital, a 1600-bed hospital, has emerged as one of the most trusted and popular health care facilities in the east with super-specialty facilities in several disciplines. It was the first hospital in the state to undertake Bone Marrow Transplantation and live-donor liver transplantation successfully. The medical institute is also among the 12 such institutions chosen by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) where human trial of the vaccine against Coronavirus is currently being taken up.
The hospital has also taken up advanced next generation sequencing study of SARS-CoV-2 virus in collaboration with the Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The project’s objective will be to understand the Covid-19 molecular and transmission pattern in the state.
However, motivated and malicious information about the functioning of these Covid-19 Hospitals in sections of the media ignoring the enormous effort being put in by the medical professionals was shocking, SOA sources said.
Such attempts to mislead the public would only spread panic and demoralize the Covid warriors, the sources said adding SOA expected the media to desist from such practices.
