KOCHI: It is one of the early hospitals in the city which was widely known among people as ‘Palli Asupathri’ meaning church hospital. The Lisie Hospital in Kochi managed by the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese which is celebrating diamond jubilee is today the hope for and middle- and lower middle-class alike by providing quality health care at affordable cost. It was on June 8, 1956, that the Archdiocese started this hospital, with the initiative of Late Archbishop Joseph Parecattil as a small clinic with a single doctor, four nurses and five beds.
And today it is raring to build a Rs 300-crore cancer centre in a 12-storey building in two years. The bed strength of the hospital in its journey increased to 250 in 1959. The ICU in coronary care was added in 1974 and the whole body CT Scan and Research Centre was started in 1985. The Basic Nursing School was started in 1992 and the dialysis unit and MRI centre started functioning in 1994 . The hospital conducted the first kidney transplantation in 1999. The first heart transplantation was done in 2013.
Everyday, on an average, 1,500 outpatients seek treatment at the hospital which has 11 super specialty wings. So far, 19 heart transplantations have been done there. Every week, one kidney transplantation takes place. Indian Medical Council has recognised Lisie as a Centre for junior and senior house surgency. Its 7 departments have been approved for conducting DNB programmes under National Board of Examinations. The valedictory function of the diamond jubilee celebrations will take place at Ernakulam Town Hall on Saturday. Justice Kurian Joseph of the Supreme Court will inaugurate the function at a function presided over by Mar George Alencherry.
