Diabetology institute to be opened at Stanley Hospital soon

The three-floor Institute of Diabetology, which is coming up in the paediatric block of the hospital, is yet to be launched as the hospital has requested for an additional floor to be dedicated to operation theatres alone. “95 per cent of the construction work for the Institute is already complete. We have however, requested for the construction of an additional floor in which we will have theatres exclusively for diabetics,” said Dr Dhanasekaran Krishnan, Deputy Medical Superintendent at the Hospital.

Stating that the initial budget was Rs 5 crore, he added, “With the new floor, the total cost has gone up to Rs 10 crore. The building will have an out-patient clinic, an 80-bedded in-patient ward, with 40 beds each for male and female. It will have a podiatric theatre, an auditorium, a lab and a floor dedicated to operation theatres for diabetics alone.”

He said that a total of 67 new posts have been sanctioned for the Institute alone. “It will include two associate professors, nine assistant professors, 20 staff nurses and seven lab technicians,” he added.

It may be noted that the hospital caters to around 900 to 1000 out-patients on a daily basis, which has caused the hospital to realise the dire need for a separate institute dedicated to the lifestyle disease, the burden for which Tamil Nadu has been, reportedly, leading.  

“The first diabetic clinic was started at the hospital in 1947 and we have been receiving the highest number of cases of diabetic out-patients in the city. We therefore felt the great need of starting such an institute,” said a doctor at the hospital.