Some of the 10 Bed ICU wards in district hospitals of Nagaland.
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Kohima, January 5 (MExN): Chief Minister of Nagaland, Neiphiu Rio will launch the 10 Bed ICU wards across 12 district hospitals and the Tele ICU Hub at Naga Health Authority, Kohima on January 6. The 12 districts are Kiphire, Phek, Tuensang, Noklak, Dimapur, Peren, Wokha, Longleng, Mokokchung, Zunheboto, Mon and Kohima.
An official handout from the IEC Bureau, Directorate of Health & Family Welfare stated that the 10 Bed ICU Project is an innovative Public Private Partnership project between the Dept of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Nagaland, and 10 Bed ICU partner NGOs (eGov Foundation and Karuna Trust) led by eGov Foundation.
The Project was launched in June 2021 as a response to the devastation caused by the COVID 19-second wave. The intervention has evolved from a relief project into a system-strengthening project. The Project tries to bridge the gaps in critical service delivery in India.
An MoU was signed last year on July 21, 2021 between the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Nagaland, and 10 Bed ICU partner NGOs (eGov Foundation and Karuna Trust).
The 10 Bed ICU partner raises funds through donors in India and abroad to provide medical equipment, technology (software & hardware), and capacity building for medical and hospital staff. And the Government provides the physical infrastructure, human resources and other operational expenses to run the ICU units set up under the project.
To oversee the project, a Project Management Unit with senior bureaucrats, including the Home Commissioner and Health Secretary and members from 10 Bed NGO partners was constituted. In Nagaland, the health department also created a sub-committee consisting of senior officials from the Health Department to assist the PMU members and ensure speedy implementation, the release stated.
HDFC Bank Parivartan funded the 10BedICU ward in Dimapur district hospital, and Vinod Khosla supported the 10BedICU wards in all the other districts. Vinod Khosla also funded the Tele-ICU Hub and spokes. Karuna Trust and Nagaland Gandhi Ashram are the field NGO partners of the project in Nagaland. Hamilton Medical Switzerland also donated one ventilator for every two ventilators procured.
10 Bed ICU is made possible by eGovernments Foundation’s CARE platform, a cloud-based open source patient management tool, as well as a smart capacity management software and patient management software. These form a TeleICU module which runs on Google Cloud’s secure, scalable and reliable infrastructure and can be seamlessly accessed in real-time by medical professionals at the TeleICU hub in Naga Hospital Authority and the connected spoke hospitals.
The 10 Bed ICU is being implemented in eight states, including Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Sikkim and Meghalaya. 200 ICU units have been set up across the project states. The Tele-ICU Hub and spoke model is showing promising signs of evolving into a transformation healthcare model, especially in resource constraint and remote locations.
