BHUBANESWAR: The state government has decided to empanel eight more hospitals having level-I trauma care facilities to provide free treatment to road accident victims within 48 hours of mishaps.
The hospitals to be empanelled soon included Medicover Hospital at Visakhapatnam and Ramkrishna Care Hospital at Raipur. With this, the accident victims can now get free trauma care treatment at 11 hospitals in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Of the nine hospitals in Odisha, seven are located in Bhubaneswar and one each at Cuttack and Rourkela. The hospitals where people can get trauma treatment free for 48 hours are AMRI Hospitals, SUM Hospital, KIMS Hospital, Hi-Tech Hospital, Kalinga Hospital, Utkal Institute of Medical Science, SUM Ultimate at Bhubaneswar, Ashwini Hospital at Cuttack and JP Hospital at Rourkela.
The state government had launched the Free Treatment for Trauma Fund (FTTF) scheme two years back and made a budgetary provision of Rs 147.2 crore for five years. In September 2019, the government had empanelled three hospitals - two at Bhubaneswar and one at Cuttack and allotted Rs 6 crore for treatment of trauma victims.
A health official said the FTTF scheme is already running in the state by the Health and Family Welfare department with the funding support of the Road Safety Fund. “The government decided to add more hospitals to facilitate prompt treatment and assist in the management of critical trauma patients so that the fatality rate due to road accidents can be reduced,” he said.