All 11 idle trauma care units to be merged with district hospitals

DEHRADUN: All the 11 trauma care units (TCUs) — which have become redundant due to lack of doctors — located in seven districts of Uttarakhand will now be merged with nearby district hospitals. The move will boost health care as these hospitals will now get additional infrastructure of the TCUs.

In the wake of rising number of pilgrims taking the Char Dham Yatra, more tourist footfall, increasing incidents of natural calamities and human-wildlife conflict, the health department, with the support of the Centre’s national health mission, constructed these TCUs, but these remained idle due to lack of doctors.

Initially, the trauma centres, which are located close to district hospitals or are situated within 100 m distance, will be merged. There are three trauma centres in Dehradun district (one each in Rishikesh, Vikasnagar and Dehradun). Chamoli and Almora have two trauma centres each while Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarkashi, Bageshwar and Haridwar have one each.

One of the reasons behind the failure in running these TCUs is the guideline that there should be at least 11 experts in each centre to cater to the needs of patients. According to experts, it is mandatory to have at least a neurosurgeon, orthopaedic surgeon and anaesthetists in each TCU. But scarcity of such experts have pushed the health department to close this centres.

Speaking to the media, director of health and family welfare department, Dr Archana Srivastava, said, “Most of the TCUs are lying unused or their infrastructure is not being utilised fully. We have now decided to use all available resources for providing health care to the public by merging these TCUs with district hospitals, as those assets also belong to the health department.”