No ICU at SMGS Hospital Jammu, a violation of MCI norm

Jammu: The 750-bedded Sri Maharaja Gulab Singh (SMGS) hospital, a premier maternity and pediatric facility in GMC Jammu, functions without an Intensive Care Unit, blatantly in violation of the Medical Council of India norms. The missing ICU facility is turning away the critically ill to the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC&H), Jammu.

According to Sources though the hospital has 10 ventilators, “it doesn’t have a common ICU with all facilities” for the critically ill patients as per the MCI guidelines.

The ICU is the basic requirement of any hospital where critically ill patients are admitted, say experts.

The existing ventilators in the hospital— 6 in NICU ward and 4 in PICU ward—do not get the required suction pressure (oxygen) which affects their efficient functioning.

At a meeting convened by the health minister sometime back, officials informed that the need for an ICU was agreed upon “Yet nothing concrete has been done till date”.

“As of now, the ICU is only in the minutes of the meeting”, they told Greater Kashmir.

“The anesthesia department is yet to prepare a proposal in this regard. The proposal would have to go to the higher authorities for formal approval,” they revealed.

According to a senior doctor having mere ventilators did not mean that one had an ICU. “A full-fledged ICU with all facilities including technicians, paramedical staff, doctors and other facilities is the basic requirement of the hospital for treatment of critical patients,” the doctor told Greater Kashmir.

Medical superintendent SMGS hospital, Raj Kumar Sangra on an optimistic note stated that the process for setting up of the ICU has been started.

“The paperwork has been started and very soon a proposal will be submitted by the dead, department of the anesthesia, after which it will be forwarded to the concerned higher authorities,” the superintendent told the daily

The SMGS hospital, a premier health facility in Jammu caters to the entire Jammu province right from Doda to Kishtwar on one end to Rajouri and Poonch at the other.