Bengaluru: Met with an accident? Don't go to Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital

Bengaluru: A road traffic accident victim was brought to the casualty of Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital recently, but he was immediately rushed to  Nimhans, as the hospital does not handle trauma cases.

This is not an isolated case, after going through the hospital records for the last one month Deccan Chronicle found that it has been referring most of the trauma cases to either Nimhans or Victoria Hospitals.

The hospital was attending only cases related to general surgery and orthopaedic injuries. The hospital daily on an average sees some 15-20 road traffic accident cases, out of which nearly five require surgeries.

A highly-placed hospital source said the hospital needs a level one trauma care facility, which would have a multi-specialty team ready to respond to trauma calls and have a high level of surgical care available at the centre.

Bowring Hospital Medical Superintendant Dr Manjunath K.S. said, “We admit all the emergency cases and only orthopaedic and general surgery cases are being taken care of. We do not have a neurology and neurosurgery department, burns ward and plastic surgery department. And, to run a trauma care facility, a hospital does require all thes multi-specialty units working in tandem.”

If a trauma care centre is set up at Bowring, it would cater to Bangalore North and East, including accidents happening at Tumakuru and Bellary Roads, K.R. Puram, Whitefield and Kolar.  “We need adequate infrastructure, equipment and manpower to establish a level one trauma care facility at our hospital,” said Dr Manjunath. He felt such a centre would reduce the load off from Victoria and Nimhans.

Trauma centre every 100 km
The Union Government had launched a scheme to have trauma care centres every 100 kilometres of national highways, so that no accident victim is made to cover more than 50 kilometres. The overall objective is to bring down preventable deaths because of road accidents to 10 per cent.