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Nagaland with a slightly over twenty lakhs population does not have a Medical College Hospital providing state-of-the-art tertiary level care. As a result each year the State exchequer handles increasing demands from patients (and accompanying relatives) to travel and seek expensive tertiary level medical attention outside the State. This in turn throws an additional burden on the State that mainly subsists on grants. Although the allocation for medical care is still a small proportion of the State’s budget, with more and more patients seeking attention outside the State, there is a keen competition for the meager funds available. While patients from the thin upper crust are more often than not able to fend for themselves it is the poor and marginalized who bear the brunt of lack of proper medical care. The alarmingly high incidence of HIV/AIDS coupled with extensive abuse of drugs and insurgency adds to the problem that thrives due to porous borders. The eighties ……. Way back during the early and mid-eighties the Government of Nagaland (GoN) with assistance from DoNER formulated plans to establish, set-up and maintain a Referral Hospital at Dimapur - the commercial hub of Nagaland that is well connected by air, rail and road. Over 133 acres of land was made available, every assistance provided and under the guidance of expert architects & engineers many teams of contractors began work in the late eighties on several blocks of multi-storied essential facilities of the Referral Hospital. The nineties ……. While most of the facilities were almost complete by the mid-nineties the project ran into rough weather due to cost-overruns, cost-escalation and paucity of funding. Before construction activities came to a grinding halt major portions of the OPD maternity, casualty, treatment, ward and utilities blocks had been completed. While all these blocks were essentially stand-alone projects of multiple contractors not enough attention was paid towards the common shared infrastructure facilities like electricity, water, iron-removal, sewage, roads, boundary walls etc. and, housing for the staff was totally neglected. The care-taker era ……. During the next decade a skeletal care-taker group under the GoN’s PWD (Housing) Department supervised by the GoN’s Health and Family Welfare Department was located on the campus. Inspite of security being provided by a contingent of the CRPF, due to sheer neglect there were repeated episodes of major thefts and acts of vandalism. Ten years later these buildings had been almost totally stripped of their electrical wiring, several hundreds of doors, windows, internal water pipelines, sanitary fixtures, false ceilings and air-conditioning ducting and pipes. Several of the remaining large window-panes were broken, wall & floor tiles had been methodically removed, several tons of reinforcement steel bars stolen, an installed transformer relocated while a patient-bed lift totally degenerated lying in a storage godown. The revitalization process ……. During these painful ten years the GoN, various Civil Societies, the Church and the general population continuously worked together to find a long term solution so that a facility offering state-of-the-art tertiary level medical care would be made available. As a result of these efforts, after examining various available options, the GoN and the Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA) on 25-Jan-2005 entered into a bilateral MoU to re-vitalize the Referral Hospital. Later, in response to wide-spread requests, on 27-May-2005 the bilateral MoU was converted into a tripartite MoU with the Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore as the third stake-holder. It was clearly understood that while the EHA and CMC Vellore will never be able to contribute financially, they will readily provide expert guidance and advice during the revitalization, setting-up and maintenance of the facilities. Recruitment of contractors, supervision of construction and equipping activities, recruitment of personnel and designing of curriculum etc for the hospital and the Medical & Nursing Colleges will be the major contributions of the EHA and CMC Vellore. The costing ……. Based upon a November 2003 Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the GoN, (including a 15% escalation on civil works but excluding expenses of formation of a Society and the Project Management Team) DoNER agreed to a total project cost of Rs 4,543.27 lakhs for re-vitalization of the Referral Hospital. DoNER further agreed to provide its share of Rs 3,561.56 lakhs expecting the GoN to raise the balance Rs 981.71 lakhs. Society formed ……. The Christian Institute of Health Sciences & Research (CIHSR) Society was formed and registered in Kohima on 16-Feb-2005 and bank accounts opened at the Main Branches of the State Bank of India at Kohima and Dimapur. Working untiringly while overcoming situational problems peculiar to the region and going through several General Body meetings, multiple Board of Directors meetings, discussions with State and Central Government officials and the usual practice of quarterly financial audits the CIHSR was able to start offering clinical services from 29th October 2007. |
