DEIC units to be set up at 3 city hospitals

The hospitals which have functional out-patient services for early intervention units will have restructuring of the unit into an exclusive centre.

The DEICs are set up to diagnose the deformities in children and treat them at the earliest at the district headquarter hospital after screening and identification of symptoms in school-going children. The DEIC centres evaluate hearing ability, growth, cardiac functioning and other basic deformities for early diagnosis.

Though the Institute of Child Health, Kilpauk Medical College and Stanley Medical College have DEIC currently, they will soon have separate centres for the patients to be able to offer in-patient services.

“There are at least 1,000 cases of birth defects found in a year including cardiac defects, Down’s syndrome and other growth-related deformities among children after they are screened at the early intervention centres to check for deformities. Thus, a full-fledged unit will help identify more such cases and help treat these children at the earliest. An amount of Rs 50 lakh has been sanctioned for the restructuring of the DEIC unit at the hospital,” said Dr P Vasanthamani, dean, Kilpauk College.

The state Health Department has also sanctioned the posts of para-medical staff on contract basis through outsourcing recently to allow proper documentation of cases and effective functioning of a total of 31 centres across the state.