City institute ties up with UK hospital

Kolkata: The Institute of Child Health (ICH) Kolkata is set to enter into collaboration with Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH). The Kolkata institute at Park Circus will start functioning as the sister renal training centre for paediatrics for the Birmingham institute. As a part of the tie-up the two institutes will be engaged in exchanging knowledge, resources including faculties in the next four years.

“This is a prestigious collaboration through the International Society of Nephrology coming to an institute in eastern India for the first time. We expect to gain a lot of knowledge in fields of paediatric kidney care, including paediatric renal nutrition programme, which is still very poor in our country along with nephro genetics. Most cases of chronic kidney diseases in children is genetics and BCH has been working on this issue for about seven years,” said Rajiv Sinha professor of paediatric nephrology at ICH.

Set up in 1957, the trust-run ICH started a paediatric kidney clinic three decades ago on a small scale. It now has a full-fledged paediatric kidney department. “We plan to start a paediatric renal transplant unit in the upcoming new building,” said Apurba Ghosh, ICH director. Other reputed institutes that have bagged such collaboration are AIIMS New Delhi, CMC Vellore and St John’s Hospital Bangalore.