SCB Medical College and hospital to set up bone bank soon

Cuttack: The premier health institution in Cuttack, the SCB Medical College and Hospital is all set to start its first ever 'bone bank' in the hospital premises soon. This initiative will provide relief to patients suffering from bone cancer, serious trauma with acute bone damage, and failed replacement surgeries.  

The bone bank will be functional inside the Orthopaedic department. According to SCB Superintendent Dr Sudhansu Sekhar Mishra, the proposal has already been approved by the government of Odisha, and tenders have been requested to purchase the necessary equipment. 

Also Read: 681 super speciality hospitals now under Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana in Odisha

Deep freezers, lyophilisation devices, and other machinery for sterilising and disinfecting collected bones are among the items for which bids are being accepted. The SCB representatives first presented the Odisha government with a bone bank idea in 2021. A DMET team visited the facility and issued its approval as long as the conditions are met, reports Odisha TV. "Two rooms have been made ready. Basically, a deep freezer, thawing machine, sterilising, and other machines are needed for the bone bank. Usually, bones are procured from live donors or cadavers,” said a doctor.

Typically, a bone bank is a place where a majority of the bones left behind by people having replacement surgery are collected, conserved, and given to patients who require them. The bones would also be taken from the patient's severed body parts. At the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital in Mumbai and the AIIMS in New Delhi, there is already a bone bank facility. The SCB bone bank is expected to be Odisha's first of its sort. 

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik previously said that it was his dream that nobody from the state should be forced to go outside for better medical treatment. He said that he wanted to see SCB transforming into an AIIMS Plus institution having cutting-edge technology in medical services to provide the best that modern medical science can provide.