Trauma Care Centre in Kalaburagi all set to become fully functional

The 110-bed Trauma Care Centre established on the Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) campus is, after a long wait, all set become a fully functional unit, with officials initiating the process to recruit various medical and para medical professionals.

The Trauma Care Centre was sanctioned by the then Congress-led government in 2016 at an estimated cost of ₹25 crore and construction work was completed by December 2017.

Though it was formally inaugurated in February 2018, the centre is said to have been lying unutilised for the past six years as the Congress-Janata Dal(S) coalition government (in 2018-19) and later, the BJP government (2019-2023) failed to make it fully functional.

However, the Trauma Care Centre functioned as a COVID-19 centre, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic in 2020.

In fact, the facility was put to more effective use during the second wave of COVID-19 in 2021, when the district administration was facing shortage of beds due to surge in COVID-19 positive cases.

After lying unutilised for long post-COVID, now the building is ready to function as a full-fledged Trauma Care Centre with six operation theatres, including a septic OT, a casualty OT and a 20-bed Intensive Care Unit and Medical Intensive Care Unit.

The ground floor will have an MRI unit, CT scan lab, triage room, casualty and mass casualty unit. The first floor will house the administration block and the general wards, whereas the operation theatre and ICUs will be on the second floor.

The Trauma Care Centre is equipped with state-of-the-art operation theatres, with the latest OT lights, tables and anaesthesia machines. The testing machines included 1.5 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner and 128 Slice CT scan.

According to sources, the government has sanctioned 180 posts, including six assistant professors, 18 senior residents, eight casualty medical officers, 100 staff nurses, 26 technicians and 30 group D employees.

Staff nurses will be recruited through Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA), whereas candidates for the posts of senior residents and casualty medical officers will be recruited through direct interview.

Medical Education Minister Sharanprakash Patil has said that the hospital will be formally inaugurated and made fully operational within a month.