Medical Council team inspects facilities at Tirunelveli hospital

Thirunelvalli:The Medical Council of India team at the Tirunelveli Medical College and Hospital on Tuesday. A three-member team of the Medical Council of India visited the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital (TVMCH) on Tuesday to ascertain whether the existing infrastructure facilities were adequate to provide quality medical education to 150 students being admitted every year into the I year MBBS.

TVMCH sources said the team, comprising Kamalesh Kohli, a full-time inspector of MCI, New Delhi, Sivasamy, a surgeon, and Prabhakar Rao, a physician, both from Bangalore, visited the departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Dermatology, Radiology, Accident and Trauma Care, Cardiology, STD, Surgery, etc., to find out the facilities available there.Moreover, they also inspected the outpatient and in-patient sections, blood bank, intensive care unit, intensive coronary care unit, clinical laboratories and laundry. Apart from physically verifying the facilities available there, they also enquired with the personnel manning those departments to check whether they had been `imported' from other Government medical colleges and hospitals.

The team is also expected to visit the Tirunelveli Medical College on Wednesday.Though the MCI has given its nod for admitting 100 students every year in I year MBBS course in TVMC, the State Government had increased the intake to 150 and hence the MCI started inspecting the facilities available in the college and its hospital since 2003.One more round of inspection, perhaps a final exercise, is expected in April or May 2008. As most of the departments were short-staffed earlier, men and material were transported in the past from other Government medical colleges and its hospitals and even primary health centres.

However, the situation has improved to a great extent this time as timely steps had been taken to fill-up the vacancies in all the departments, while qualified hands in adequate numbers could not be identified for the `clinical side' such as anatomy, physiology, etc.The college and its hospital are in extremely comfortable position as far as surgical sides and allied infrastructure facilities are concerned and hence the visiting team is satisfied and there would not be any problem this time, sources said.