National Institute of Ageing building not of good quality: Ma Su

CHENNAI: Health Minister Ma Subramanian inspected the geriatric care hospital at King Institute campus in Guindy on Saturday. The dedicated COVID-19 care facility will be converted to National Institute of Ageing as planned before the pandemic.

Health Minister said that the construction work of the National Institute of Ageing began in 2014-15 at an estimated cost of Rs.151.17 crores during the last regime. The construction work is pending and the facility was used as COVID-19 dedicated facility during the pandemic. Recently, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu had ordered to convert it back into National Institute of Ageing.

He said that the building seems to be old and the building does not look like a hospital built two years ago. In many places, the parts of the hospital are damaged. It is doubtful whether this hospital will be safe for the elderly if it is converted into a geriatric hospital in ten days as planned.

"We therefore immediately instructed the Chief Engineer of Public Works to check along with the technical team of the building and assess the quality of the building. It is advisable to examine how strong the structure is. The decision to reopen the hospital will be taken 15 days after they inspect and certify the quality, " health minister said. He also urged the Chief Minister to take action against those involved in any irregularities in the construction of this building.

Talking about the transfer counselling of the doctors, he said that as many as 1,000 doctors will be transferred and the counselling is scheduled to take place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for medical staff under the Directorate of Medical Education. The counselling will be held on Friday for those under the administration of the Directorate of Public Health and Immunization, Department of Medicine, Medicine and Rural Welfare.

Transfers of senior doctors will be announced in the first week of June and they can choose the location of the place they want to work in.

A transparent counselling for 10,000 village health nurses, area health nurses, community health nurses and health inspectors is scheduled to take place starting in the first week of June.

Regarding the case of BA.4 variant of Omicron in Tamil Nadu, he said that the patient is currently well and safe. It is noteworthy that there was no infection to those in contact with the family. He announced that a major vaccination camp is set to take place on June 12th.