Disaster management lessons for Chennai hospital

Chennai, Sep 29 (UNI) The Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre today conducted a mock drill to assess its alertness in handling an emergency situation by simulating a scenario of treating 40 people injured in a bomb blast at the Guindy railway station in the city.

As part of the exercise, the hospital lined up ambulances and brought the ''injured'' to the emergency ward to ascertain the readiness and quickness with which patients could be attended.

Soon after the ''victims'' were brought to hospital, they were segregated into ''seriously injured'' and ''marginally injured'' and doctors of the respective departments attended to them.

Hospital sources said this was a routine exercise to keep the system alert and a similar exercise was carried out for fire accident victims two months ago.

However, given the series of bomb blasts across the country recently, a few television channels mistook the mock drill for a real terror attack and scrolled flash news.

Putting to rest all anxieties and rumours to this effect, the hospital clarified that it was only a mock exercise to verify whether the departments were in readiness to meet such a disaster.

All the emergency services were kept in readiness even before the ''victims'' arrived and they were ''treated'' immediately on arrival, the sources said, adding that all the simulations were done within the Sri Ramachandra University complex.

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