My vision for 2021

Year 2021 started with new hopes with availability of vaccines for COVID 19. However, the virus has proved to be smarter and deadlier by changing its strain. More and more people are suffering and dying due to non-availability of ICU beds, oxygen, injection Remdesivir, etc.

Year 2020 has been really a very challenging year for healthcare in particular and humanity at large. The end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 came with deadly and hugely infectious COVID-19 virus, spread from labs of China. Many people lost their dear ones all across the world. World over, there were lock downs leading to loss of jobs, shutting of industries, people getting locked in their houses, and students missing schools and colleges.

Many hospitals incurred huge losses due to drastic fall in the number of OPDs, IPDs, surgeries, etc. But those who took early and good decision of changing their policies and infrastructure to cater for COVID-19 patients’ diagnosis and treatment made good profits also. The government took timely steps to control prices of treatment to make it affordable for the common man. That is very appreciable as there were reports of non-available beds or huge charges. These challenges could be overcome with the government’s timely intervention.

Thankfully, India and its citizens rose to the challenge and contained deaths. India is leading the world in vaccine production, supply to its own population and across the world. Salute to our scientists and visionary leadership.

My heartiest congratulations to Indian scientists for coming up with the vaccine before the due date of March 2021. India has not only given vaccine to a record number of people but it has also supplied vaccine to many neighboring and friendly countries across the globe. There were some apprehensions about side effects of vaccine, but these fears have been dispelled with many leaders from healthcare industries leading from the front and taking vaccine.

IQ City Medical College and Hospital, Durgapur, West Bengal, is a 799-bedded multi-specialty hospital providing services to all classes of people in the society. We have all basic specialties and superspecialties like cardiology, neurology, neurosurgery, urology, dialysis, MRI, CT scan, cath lab, and nine OTs.

We have increased our ICU beds from 98 to 150 to look after more critically ill patients. We are adding AC wards and safe home facilities for COVID-19 patients so that we can save more lives.

We have plans to set up an oxygen plant to avoid any shortage of this vital gas to save patients. We are also planning to establish another hospital and medical college and a nursing college in near future to augment the supply of doctors and nurses to care for humanity.

Being a medical college, most of the patients coming to IQ City Hospital are serious and referred from other hospitals. We have around 100 ICU beds but still every day many patients have to be refused admission due to non-availability of ICU beds. Having joined hands with a world-class cardiac surgeon, Dr Kunal Sarkar from Medica, the demand for ICU beds has further increased. Hence, we have decided to augment our ICU beds by more than 60 beds, so that no patient is referred back due to lack of ICU beds.

We have plans to increase beds in the specialized ICUs like neuro, respiratory, surgical, and medical ICUs. We will require many ventilators, monitors, infusion pumps, defibrillators, doctors, nurses, paramedics, etc.

We are planning to establish an Oncology Center, and buy Linac, Cobalt machines, etc.

We are also open to tie up or develop our own Onco Center, which will require setting up of Linac, Cobalt, Gamma knife, PET CT, etc.

IQ City Medical College gives a unique opportunity to doctors to teach in a medical college and practice in a tertiary care hospital.