The world’s first hospital train, Lifeline Express, added two more coaches on Thursday.
The coaches, one of which will serve as cancer coach and the other which will be dedicated to family health services, were inaugurated by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare J. P. Nadda here.
The service, which was started 25 years ago with three wooden coaches, provides medical care to the remotest parts of the country and has seven steel coaches.
An initiative of Impact India Foundation, Lifeline Express has treated around one million people in rural areas of the country free of charge since its inception in 1991. Nearly 2,00,000 medical professionals from around the world have donated their services on the train.
“If patients can’t reach the hospital, the hospital must reach the patients. Often in a rural district, even the biggest hospitals do not have either operation theatres or trained surgeons. Our train fills that gap,” said Samir Shah, the trustee of Impact India Foundation.
Wi-fi enabled
The seven coaches of Lifeline Express include operation theatres, pathology lab, mammography unit, gynaecology examination room, dental unit, pharmacy, consultation cubicles and facilities for X-ray. The train is wi-fi enabled. This helps a doctor sitting in a metro city examine a patient’s x-ray reports and other images.
