J&K to have 500-bedded dedicated Infectious Diseases Hospital

Srinagar: The 500-bedded centre at Khonmoh will be soon converted into a comprehensive Infectious Diseases Hospital as per the direction of the Jammu & Kashmir government.

The centre was first created by DRDO last year to treat COVID-19 patients during the pandemic period but now the government has directed to convert the centre making it UT's first hospital to treat patients suffering from serious infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis, Hepatitis, Influenza, Diarrhoeas, Dengue, Malaria and many more.

Aiming to treat the patients separately from other hospitals, will also stop the disease from spreading among the public. The centre has a huge infrastructure to take patients in a bulk with various equipment and facilities which fulfils the purpose of establishing the hospital.

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An official in the Health and Medical Education Department told GK "We have well equipped Intensive Care Units with hundreds of ventilators, including those meant for children and infants; we have high-flow oxygen on every bed; we have a huge bed capacity at this hospital. We cannot let it waste."

The decision to convert the centre was taken universally by the higher-ups in a meeting. The meeting was held last week by the former Principal Secretary to J&K Government for Health and Medical Education Navin Kumar Chaudhary. The Directorate of Health (Jammu and Kashmir divisions) and the Principal of GMC Srinagar were present at the meeting.

The Health and Medical Education Department headed by Vivek Bhardwaj and Navin Kumar Chaudhary has granted the centre's conversion to an Infectious Diseases Hospital. However, the official order to start the process is yet pending.

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According to the official, the process of taking over had been initiated and if the hospital in future comes in contact with any further pandemic situation, then the hospital will also shelter those patients and treat them accordingly.

"Although manpower that had been deputed from other departments and hospitals has been repatriated, this contractual staff is still working with the hospital and will be retained to run the services," said the official adding that the recruitment process took place on a contractual basis last year.