RailEnquiry

CHENNAI: In the event of a medical emergency, passengers will no longer have to wait for an ambulance and waste time as the vehicle makes its way through the crowded roads outside Chennai Central.

The railway station now has a round-the-clock emergency medical centre, with an ambulance on standby, at which passengers will be treated free of cost.

The railways opened the facility, the first of its kind in the south, on Monday. SRM Institute of Medical Sciences, Vadapalani, selected by tender, set up the three-bed centre at a cost of `70 lakh.

The Madras high court last December rapped Southern Railway for not allocating space for a medical centre despite Chennai Central being the biggest railway station in the city, with around four lakh passengers using it every day. The court had directed Southern railways to establish "as expeditiously as possibly, preferably within three months".

The centre will have three beds, two doctors on duty and another on standby, four nurses, a paramedic team and a 24/7 ambulance, said Dr Siddhartha Ghosh, CEO, SRM Institute of Medical Sciences. "It is equipped with oxygen cylinders and ECG, defibrillator and resuscitation equipment," he said. The centre will treat passengers in emergencies, including those with cardiac problems and asthma-related respiratory difficulties. The ambulance will take patients who need further attention to the nearest hospital. "This will be the first emergency medical centre at a railway station to have an ambulance on the ready round the clock," Ghosh said.

"The emergency medical centre will be useful because we have an average of two medical emergencies a day," said S Govindasamy, station manager, Central. "We earlier took ill passengers to Government General Hospital across the road. But the ambulance took nearly an hour to reach the railway station."

Railways will soon float a tender to set up a pharmacy at the station. Southern Railway chief public relations officer V JAccamma said there were no immediate plans to set up similar facilities at other stations.

"Tenders will be floated and medical centres will be set up based on the success of the facility at Central," she said.