To Battle Covid-19, Railways Plans To Turn Coaches Into Hospitals, Kerala Builder Offers Help

If what we have seen from across the world in China, Iran, Italy and Spain are anything to go by, once the Covid-19 outbreak reaches stage-III where it is out of control, the medical infrastructure in that country will fall way short of what is required to treat the ever-growing number of patients.?

In China, we saw them building a 1000-bed hospital from scratch and in other countries, everything from schools, colleges, places of worship and even stadiums have been converted to makeshift hospitals and isolation faculties.?

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In India too, many health care experts have warned that the existing infrastructure will not be enough once the number of cases starts rising.As per data, India has 7,13,986 total government hospital beds available which is 0.55 beds per 1000 population.?

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According to WHO, there should be at least 3 beds per 1000 in the country.?

There are no official figures on the number of ventilators available in the public sector.?

BCCL

Keeping this in mind, the Indian Railways, which has suspended service due to the Covid-19 outbreak is exploring the possibility of converting train coaches into isolation facilities.?

According to reports, the Rail Coach Factory (RCF) in Kapurthala has been tasked to convert LHB coaches into isolation wards.?

Asset Homes, a Kerala-based real estate developer has also submitted the proposal to Prime Minister and disaster management officials stating that more than 1,000 isolation beds can be made using the coaches of Indian Railway.?

BCCL

“We have 12,617 trains with 23-30 coaches in our country. We can easily convert them into ‘mobile hospitals’ with facilities like consultation rooms, medical stores, ICU and pantry. Each train can accommodate at least 1,000 beds. Using the 7,500+ railway stations, the patients can be admitted to the trains," Asset Homes managing director Sunil Kumar V said.?

According to him, we can create a minimum of one crore beds within no time.“We have a total of almost 7,500 large and small stations and the largest network of one crore km. The converted trains can move to affected areas and start services within no time,” he said.?

BCCL

With a 1.3 billion population, even if 10 per cent of the public gets infected, the country will require around 10 crore beds.?

There are also reports that the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai has been asked to explore the possibility of manufacturing ventilators.This has so far remained unsuccessful, but the engineers are hopeful to turn it around.?