Critical Care at NJH - An appeal to gift

20 year old PrD had been with us for the last days. When PrD came to us 10 days back, she was having seizures for more than 12 hours. Her baby was dead. We tried to deliver her normally. But, she did not deliver. She had been in the ventilator throughout from the time of admission. We had to take her up for a Cesarean section, the last resort. After the Cesarian, she has held on for the last 7 days. She continues to be on the ventilator and we think that she would have done better with a full fledged ventilator rather than the anesthesia ventilators that we have.

This takes me to a request that I’ve trying to put across to garner funds for the Acute Care Unit. 

Below is a note from Dr. Roshine requesting for funds to upgrade the Acute Care Unit –

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Dear friends,

Over the past years, we have been having a large number of critically ill patients being managed in our hospital. This is due to the lack of health services capable of providing intensive care in our locality as well as the fact that the nearest highest referral centre is 165 kms away in Ranchi. As for the poor, a referral to Ranchi is a nightmare as they have to often bear  unnecessary expenses, get lost in the crowd as there is no proper guidance and often do not receive the  care expected of a tertiary level hospital.

For these reasons, we are very keen on developing a department of critical care in our hospital. The majority of  patients who require intensive management have been snake bite victims, patients with meningitis, acute febrile illness with multi organ dysfunction and high risk obstetric patients, all of whom can be potentially treated and cured. However, in our management of critically ill patients, we have been forced to compromise on several areas due to the lack of infrastructure.

We currently have a 6 bedded ACU ‘acute care unit’ where we manage emergencies, critically ill patients and most post operative patients. The last rainy season was particularly difficult as we had to shift out patients who were not completely stabilised to the general wards for lack of beds in ACU. Another requirement would be an area for casualty where patients are triaged and emergency procedures can be carried out before timely referral. This would greatly help in ensuring that the patients in ACU are not transferred out. 

Creating a 12 bedded Intensive care unit would be ideal as it would also benefit post operative patients who can be monitored closely in their post operative period. This would need additional space.

1. Medical equipment:

a. Multipara monitors: A multi para monitor for every 2 beds

b. Ventillators: Currently we have two ventilators that are meant for use in the operation theatre. The drawbacks of these machines have been that they cannot be used in children and do not provide adequate pressures in patients with pulmonary edema. We have been manually ventillating these subset of patients. We have been greatly encouraged by the donation of a CPAPmachine which ensures that a few patients who come in pulmonary edema are being managed effectively now.

d. Nebulisation port for use in ventilators

e. Infusion pumps 

2. Furniture:
a. Fowler beds

b. Emergency trolleys

3. Centralised Oxygen supply

These are our current requirements and we pray that God will provide for us and we would use our resources wisely.

In future, once our basic infrastructure and quality of care has improved, we hope to address other issues that are pertinent to the health needs of our population. 



Dr. Roshine Mary Koshy

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I'm sure that you've seen a fund request that I had put about a month back for upgrading and re-equipping out critical care unit. Please pray and pass the message along.

Here is the budget we are looking at. Please forward to friend and well-wishers who may be looking at opportunities to give a Christmas gift .  .. ...

	Requirement	Cost
1	900 square feet of space	9,00,000
2	Ventilators (2)	15,00,000
3	Multiparamonitors (4)	3,00,000
4	Syringe pumps (6)	3,00,000
5	Furniture	3,00,000
6	Electricity back-up	1,00,000
7	Other instruments	1,00,000
	TOTAL COSTS	35,00,000

Well, the costs put here are only an estimate. In foreign currency, this would be about 55,000 USD/ 42,000 Euros/60,000 AUD/16,000 KD/36,000 GBP.The centralised oxygen supply should amount to an additional 500,000 INR

If anybody is interested please send me a e-mail to either jeevan@eha-health.org or jeevan53@gmail.com