TRIHMS ‘Covid-19 hospital’ to become functional from 3 Apr, patients being shifted to RKMH

Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, Mar 30: Steps are on to ensure that Tomo Riba Institute of Health & Medical Sciences (TRIHMS), which has been designated as ‘Covid-19 hospital’ to deal with cases related to the coronavirus pandemic, becomes fully functional from 3 April, Health Secretary P Parthiban informed here on Monday.
Speaking to The Arunachal Times, the secretary informed that currently patients from TRIHMS are being shifted to Ramakrishna Mission Hospital (RKMH), which has been designated to take the responsibility of handling routine health issues of the people.
“Since TRIHMS has now been designated as Covid-19 hospital, we cannot take any other patients in the hospital. However, we are fully prepared and have already deployed all the TRIHMS medical team to RKMH to tackle any emergency issue,” Parthiban said.
He said the TRIHMS authorities have been asked to take patients needing medical assistance to RKMH, “for which purpose the state government has arranged specific vehicles and ambulances at TRIHMS.”
“In addition to this, we are also taking private hospitals into our ambit for the purpose. However, they are not empanelled currently; therefore we had recently convened a meeting with the private hospital authorities in this regard, asking them to start taking patients too.
“There are certain issues, which will soon be sorted out, and thereafter we can send patients to all private hospitals, including Niba Hospital in Naharlagun, Heema Hospital in Itanagar, and others,” the secretary said.
Regarding the availability of personal protection equipment (PPE), he informed that a fresh batch of 1000 PPE has been dispatched from New Delhi and will be reaching the state on Tuesday.
“More batches will be dispatched and soon be made available to the doctors and medical staff,” he said.
Meanwhile, despite the secretary’s assurances, there has been some concern among doctors and nurses that they might not be prepared enough to handle the Covid-19 ICU, especially in the absence of proper training.
To this, the secretary responded: “Training for the doctors and medical staff will be held via ‘zoom’ application from today (Monday) onwards. We have appealed to all the doctors and medical staff to attend the training, which is being specially provided by the government of India in view of the pandemic.
“If needed, the authorities are also ready to provide them with the required training,” he said.