A ward exclusively to treat diabetics is coming at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH), the tertiary referral hospital for the Western region.
Hospital sources told The Hindu here on Saturday that the move was intended to provide all the treatment for diabetes under a single roof. It will have 16 beds that will be divided equally among men and women. Now, diabetics requiring surgery were accommodated at the surgical ward while others such as those having ulcers or gangrene were treated in different wards. Those who had developed complications such as high blood sugar levels, which would lead to diabetic coma, were now treated at the Intensive Care Unit. The new ward aims to bring all of them under one roof for efficient treatment. The ward was likely to be inaugurated in a week’s time.
The CMCH had established a counter under the Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project (TNHSP) initiative to screen all people above 30 for four non-communicable diseases, including diabetes and its complications.
The other diseases are hypertension with cardiovascular diseases, breast cancer and cervical cancer. Under this campaign, at least 200 patients were being screened every day.
Sources in the TNHSP said that around 10 new cases of diabetics were detected at the CMCH every month. However, only a few of them would require hospitalisation. The cost of treating these patients was covered under the Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme.
