Kochi: With rising cardiac-related casualties reported every season at Sabarimala, the state government augmented health-care facilities at Sabarimala this time around. However, it received a setback with house surgeons from the five medical colleges in the state objecting to their posting at the hill shrine. “A team of 10 house surgeons from Thrissur were initially deployed at oxygen centres along the trekking path. However, they found tasks such as cardiac pulmonary resuscitation and AED operations did not require their service and could be done by trained volunteers. However, there’s also a technical issue that compelled us to withdraw from the project,” Director of Medical Education Dr Ramla Beevi.
There are over 600 House Surgeons at the five medical colleges across the state and the plan was to deploy them in batches at the 23 Emergency Medical Care centres, with three persons each day. “Objections arose from within since the students have to complete three months posting each at Primary Health Centres, rural and urban health centres. The certificate for posting at Sabarimala, however, did not have legality for curriculum purposes," the official said. There were also fears of their posting adversely affecting the functioning of wards in medical colleges. However, the director promised to take up the technical issue with concerned authorities and “relook” at deploying house surgeons at Sabarimala during the next season. Currently, there are no expert services available at Sabarimala for heart ailments though the government has plans to set up a full-fledged modern hospital that would function round the year before the next pilgrimage season.
797 collapse during trek; 7 saved with life support:
A total of 797 pilgrims have so far collapsed during the arduous trekking in the four-km Pampa - Sannidhanam stretch this season. While a total of 11 deaths were reported along the trekking path, seven pilgrims could be rescued using the basic life support provided at the emergency medical care centres. “We could so far save seven people who suffered cardiac arrest and were in a life threatening stage. This shows the decisive role of the EMCs, experimented from this season onwards. So far we’ve trained 800 volunteers to be deployed at the medical centres along with highly-qualified emergency medical technicians. While the volunteers will be given 16-hour training, the technicians will have a one-year stint,” said Dr Venugopalan P. P., Executive Director, Active Network Group of Emergency Life Savers (Angels) which trains the volunteers.
From December 20, the service of 10 trained volunteers is provided round-the-clock. Their strength has been enhanced to 25 from January 5, Dr Venugopalan, also the Director, Emergency Medicine, DM Health Care, said. “On December 20, my father became unconscious while trekking the holy path. The volunteers there rushed in and extended basic life support. He suffered two more cardiac arrests and the people there worked hard to get his condition stable. Later he was referred to Parumala St Gregorious Cardiology Hospital. They said they’ve nothing more to do as the emergency medical team provided the best first aid care. He later underwent bypass surgery and slowly recovered,” said Sarath Mohan, a native of Thiruvananthapuram. His father Mohan Nair (65) collapsed during trekking at Neelimala.
