On the second floor of the newly built laboratory in a century-old hospital,an entire ward has been readied to handle any swine flu cases detected in Mumbai. Health officials of the state government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation have identified the Chichpokli-located Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases,the largest Infectious Diseases Hospital in South-East Asia,as the treatment centre for the any suspected cases. The 515-bed hospital in Central Mumbai also houses the swank new Polymerase Chain Reaction laboratory,built after the 2005 deluge in Mumbai that saw hundreds of deaths due to leptospirosis. In the same new building,16 beds in a ward have been identified and equipped with ventilators to tackle the highly infectious H1N1,or swine flu virus. The hospital which otherwise survives on a team of honorary doctors has now made available three resident doctors,10 paramedical assistants and senior staff available on campus. We are providing protective gear like masks and gloves for dealing with patients. The technique called barrier nursing will be used during treatment,in which doctors have some protective barriers with the patient, said Dr Umesh Aigal,chief medical superintendent of Kasturba hospital. The next-door-neighbour opposite Arthur Road Jail is where the British built an isolation hospital for infectious diseases in 1896. Its here that patients diagnosed with infectious diseases like cholera,jaundice,plague and later SARS were treated. The hospital in the old days was called the City fever hospital,and had to primarily handle smallpox. Tents would be put up within the campus for the patients. It was later during the cholera outbreak in Mumbai and plague in Surat,that the hospitals services were tested. The hospital is not new to handling pandemic health threats. When foreign travellers in 2003 brought the fear of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) to Mumbai,the hospital served up as the sanatorium where patients with the highly contagious bug could be housed. While Haffkine Institute has been identified as the testing centre along with Pune-based National Institute of Virology,Kasturba hospitals PCR lab can also handle the detection of the swine flu virus. We could use the PCR lab provided we get kits from the NICD in Delhi. Till then,Haffkine Institute will handle the testing of cases, said Aigal.
