Harsh Vardhan to lay down foundation stone of National Sports injury Centre

New Delhi : Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan is scheduled to lay down the foundation stone of the expanded facility of Sports Injury Centre on August 30.

The facility would offer state-of-art medical aid to the sportspersons across the country.

In 2017, the Union Health Ministry had proposed to expand the existing facility of Sports Injury Centre against the increasing OPD rush of a sportsperson. For this, the health ministry had allotted an additional three-acre land to the sports injury center for commissioning of national sports medicine center.

As of now, the existing facility of sports injury center is witnessing a large number of patients with OPD rush increased by multiple folds.
"When sports injury center was started in 2010, it saw just about 6500 patients in the OPD. However, in 2018- at least 1 lakh 20 thousand patients were seen by our doctors in the OPD. So the burden of patients is huge. The expansion of the institute will give patients state-of-art treatment in sports medicine both in pre-habilitation and rehabilitation," said a senior official requesting anonymity.

"Similarly, in 2010 we admitted 163 patients in the hospital which increased to 34 27 patients in 2018," he said.

The health ministry has sought to increase the bed strength from 42 to 156 with additional manpower, advanced equipment, and greater infrastructure. The new facility will have a major focus on pre-habilitation and rehabilitation for a sportsperson.

The new facility will have six OTs, 156 beds capacity, super-specialty surgical facility. It will also have high-performance laboratories like- biochemical laboratory with 3D motion analysis and isokinetic, swimming pool for underwater training, dry & wet laboratory for training, and rehabilitation.

"Probably, it would be a first institute dedicated to sports medicine offering teaching and training to budding doctors. Young doctors can do academic practice on dry and wet laboratories, said the official adding that five senior faculties will join us.

Health experts say that in India there are very few sports medicine centers. Due to a lack of expertise and knowledge in performing the procedures of anterior cruciate ligament and arthroscopic surgeries most of the sportsperson has to undergo revision surgeries.

The national Centre for sports medicine is likely to get operational by 2021.

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