Doctors in SMCH struggling due to unavailability of un-interrupted power supply; "Had to rerun many tests," VP, Bhaskar Gupta

Silchar Medical College and Hospital is functioning at war-footing. Being the only testing and treating centre in South Assam, the doctors of SMCH are toiling hard. In the 24 hours, it conducted 54 throat-swab tests and 2128 till date. With long-distance passenger trains resuming service the SMCH is preparing to conduct more tests per day.

There are 11 COVID19 patients admitted to the hospital who are being tested frequently as per the protocol. While the number of tests have gone up significantly, the process has slowed down. Vice-principal of Silchar Medical College, Dr. Bhaskar Gupta informed that many reports are still pending due to the unavailability of uninterrupted power supply. “We are facing some problems due to the unavailability of uninterrupted power supply and due to that, the results are getting delayed,” said Dr. Gupta.

“We need an uninterrupted power supply. Though we have a generator in place in SMCH, yet if the power drops, at times we just have to rerun the whole test which slows down the entire process. Yesterday, due to this reason we had a lot of reports pending,” said Gupta.

Dr. Gupta said the SMCH authority is in touch with APDCL and keeps reporting about the situation. “See a lot of it is not in our hands. If a storm breaks, the power supply gets interrupted and that is something we accept and move on,” said Gupta.

However, there is a long pending demand of SMCH authority which if executed would have come handy in these situations. The SMCH authority demanded an exclusive substation for the medical institute cum hospital. The state government acknowledged the demand and approved the project. “We got the requisite approvals and a fund of around Rs 3.5 crore was disbursed to APDCL about nine months back. I must admit that we have not noticed APDCL officials taking any serious steps to install the exclusive substation,” concluded Gupta.