BGS Global Hospitals launched its Centre of Excellence for Paediatric Neurosciences. As part of its inaugural programme, the hospital has invited a team of leading international neurosurgeons who will operate on 100 children suffering from brain tumours.

The Paediatric Intensive Care Unit has 20 beds equipped with incubators, ventilators, etc and is manned by trained paramedical staff - one nurse for every bed as well as paediatric instensivists.

According to Dr N K Venkataramana, vice-chairman and Neurosurgeon, BGS Global Hospitals the paediatric population in India is growing with one third of the total population are children below 16 years. “We need to take special care of the young. They are prone to host of diseases such as congenital anomalies, vascular diseases injuries, epilepsy, tumours, genetic and metabolic diseases. Around 1.5 million suffer from congenital anomalies of the brain and spine in the country,” said Dr Venkataramana.

So far, BGS has performed 118 paediatric neurosurgeries. As a corporate social responsibility initiative, the Hospital, through the Dhanavantri Trust has offered to treat 100 children with brain tumours free of cost in the coming months.

The problem faced is lack of awareness of the diseases, accessibility to advanced infrastructure and trained neurosurgeons. There are only 1200 neurosurgeons in the country. This figure is expected to grow to 1500 in the next four years. However the actual requirement in our country is about 5000 neurosurgeons. At present there are only 50 - 60 paediatric neurosurgeons in India.

A special international course to deal with paediatric neurosurgical problems has been designed and twelve eminent paediatric neurosurgeons from UK, USA, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Korea and Taiwan along with six from India are here to train surgeons through discussions, demonstrations, interactions and video presentations. This is the first time that the Asian Australasian Advanced Course in Paediatric Neurosurgery is being organized in the country in association with Advanced Neuroscience Institute of BGS Global Hospitals.

Dr Christian Sainte Rose, Paediatric Neurosurgeon, France said that children present a different clinical picture compared to adults. A small child can not express its pain and agony. It manifests in the form of irritability, failure to grow, mental subnormality, inability to walk and poor vision. Many of these symptoms can be missed in them and this leads to advanced stage of the disease. It is important that treating paediatricians should be educated to diagnose these conditions well in time and refer to a centre equipped with advanced set up to deal with these children. Therefore, the objective has been to provide early diagnosis and treatment in every child with such ailments.