HealthBuzz

Healthcare Boost from Railways

Presenting her 'Railway Budget' for the fiscal year 2009-10, the Union Railways Minister, Mamata Banerjee announced a slew of proposals aimed at ensuring welfare of the railway staff.

In her budget speech she has proposed to set up seven nursing colleges on railway land at Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai (Kalyan), Chennai, Secunderabad, Lucknow and Jabalpur on Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model so as to facilitate the wards of the railway employees in finding a good vocational avenue.

Besides, medical colleges are planned to be established attached to existing railway hospitals through PPP, to give higher education facilities to new generation of railway children. The locations would be Chennai, Hyderabad, Bilaspur, Lucknow, Barasat, Bhubaneswar, Mysore, Kharagpur, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Jodhpur, Garden Reach, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, BR Singh Hospital -Kolkata, Bhopal, Jammu and Thiruvananathapuram

The railways will provide dormitories for ladies and gents who accompany the patients at 16 hospitals having 150 beds and above. For special medical treatment of railway persons, general managers will be empowered to sanction cases up to Rs 4 lakh.

The Metro Railway Hospital at Tollygunge in Kolkata will be upgraded to a 75-bedded hospital. Separate burn units will be provided at major railway hospitals of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Secunderabad, Bangalore and BR Singh Hospital in Kolkata.

Joy Roy Choudhury