India sets up modular hospitals to treat Covid 19 patients

New Delhi : As the country is trying to plug in its health infrastructure gap amid the fear of third Covid-19 wave, India has started project 'Extension of Hospitals' in various states,especially in rural areas and smaller towns,

The first batch of 100 bedded hospitals is being commissioned at Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh); Amravati, Pune, and Jalna (Maharastra); Mohali (Punjab), and a 20-bed hospital at Raipur (Chhattisgarh). Bengaluru (Karnataka) will have one each of 20, 50, and 100-beds in the first phase.

Project 'Extension Hospitals' are modular hospitals built adjacent to an existing hospital building.

As Covid-19 cases surged in different parts of the country, infrastructure in hospitals was under immense pressure innovative modular hospitals are expected to come as a huge relief.

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) invited private sector companies, donor organizations, and individuals to support the initiative along with various other projects of national importance.The PSA office has also identified requirements of close to 50 hospitals in states where the highest number of Covid-19 cases were reported.

Modulus Housing developed the MediCAB hospitals enables building around 100-bedded extension facility in 3-weeks' time and are designed with a dedicated zone of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) that can accommodate various life-supporting equipment and medical devices.

These rapidly deployable hospitals have durability of around 25 years, and they can also be shifted in the future for any disaster response in less than a week.

MediCAB extension hospitals are currently deployed with the help of the American Indian Foundation (AIF). Mastercard, Texas Instruments, Zscaler, PNB Housing, Goldman Sachs, Lenovo, and NASSCOM Foundation have also extended CSR support to the construction activities.

The Office of PSA has also collaborated with Tata Projects Ltd to deploy modular hospitals at multiple sites in Punjab and Chhattisgarh. They have initiated work on 48 bedded modular hospitals in Gurdaspur and Faridkot (Punjab).

Expansion of ICU at multiple hospitals in Chhattisgarh including Raipur, Jashpur, Bemetara, Kanker, and Gaurella is also underway.

(With IANS inputs)