Just a month into its inauguration and the newly renovated and fully refurbished paediatric ward at KEM Hospital is already drawing comparisons with some of the best paediatric wards in the country.

Depicting features that are peculiar with most of the corporate hospitals around the country, the paediatric ward at KEM Hospital is perhaps the only of this kind in civic hospitals in the state.

In fact, the renovation plans adopted by the hospital are said to be fresh and somewhat similar to the one carried out previously on the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the hospital in August last year.

While the renovation plans were being discussed almost two years ago, it was only due to the painstaking efforts from the Dean, Dr Nilima Kshirsagar and various Heads of the paediatric ward that the exercise materialized into a spanking new refurbished ward.

With philanthropic efforts rendered by the Shri Chimanlal Laxmichand Parikh family who generously funded the entire project including the cost of equipment, the ward today stands to benefit a large number of patients.

Some unique features in the ward for welfare and fast recuperation of children include: facility for showing movies on a big screen on the wall of the hospital (about 2 hours per day), a separate play area for children, instrumental music, microphone facility for gathering and disseminating information to the doctors/parents and animated cartoon characters drawn on the tiles of the walls.

Apart from the aesthetic redo, the donors also aided the management in installing 4 new suction machines, 4 new infusion pumps and 4 new warmers. A separate doctors room facilitated with a library and a seminar room can also be spotted in the ward of the hospital.

"The wards were in a dilapidated state and needed urgent repairs and furnishing. After two long years of hard work by the management and technical staff of the ward, and also the timely assistance rendered by the Laxmichand family, we were finally able to see a new structure," cited Dr Keya Lahiri, professor and head of the department.

According to her, "It is the only civic hospital in the city that such a paediatric department could be spotted and could also be safely compared with some of the other corporate hospitals around the country."

Apart from the paediatric ward, the 15-bedded PICU of the hospital is also said to be the best and biggest ever centre in the state of Maharashtra. In fact it comes a close second in India after the Lady Harding Hospital, New Delhi, which has the highest number of beds (25 beds) allotted to the PICU.

The PICU of the hospital is said to be equipped with 6 ventilators, multi-channel monitors that are mounted on each bed, ECG machine, doppler, ultrasound machine, defibrillator and radiant warmers. The ward attends to patients suffering from sepsis, respiratory and cardiac problems, tetanus, dengue, leptospirosis and comatose among the others.

With occupancy rates hovering above the 110 per cent mark and with hospital charges varying from 150-200 rupees per day, the hospital finds it very difficult to accommodate all patients, many of whom have to wait for their turn to be admitted. But this does not dampen the spirits of the consultants and staff who take extra rounds to attend to their patients throughout the day.

And with the backing of donors in the form of monetary aid to the ward whenever desired, the hospital is now taking efforts to lay strong emphasis on its basic principles revolving around the fields of providing satisfactory patient care, administration, research work, training and development and education.