New building at Sassoon to be inaugurated on Friday

The new building was conceptualised way back in 2008 but lack of adequate funds resulted in delays in construction

Three years after being made operational for the emergency situation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, the eleven-storied new building at Sassoon General Hospital (SGH) will be inaugurated on Friday at 9.15 am by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.

The building took over 13 years to complete at a cost of ₹183 crore, officials said. (HT FILE PHOTO)

The new building was conceptualised way back in 2008 but lack of adequate funds resulted in delays in construction. The building took over 13 years to complete at a cost of ₹183 crore, officials said. Following the spike in Covid-19 cases on April 5, 2020, the same building was turned into a dedicated Covid-19 centre. A total of 570 beds with ICU (140), oxygen beds (380) and isolation beds (50) were made available for Covid-19 patients.

The new building of the SGH has a built-up area of 30,205 square metres and seven departments including paediatric, chest, anaesthesiology, orthopaedic, ENT, ophthalmology and dermatology. The building houses 496 beds for indoor patients across its seven departments, and this includes 26 beds for transgenders.

The building will have a transplant and implant operation theatre, and 10 major and three minor operation theatres. The blood bank has been shifted to the new building and so also have other facilities like the central sterile services’ department (CSSD), linen chute, pneumatic tube systems and garbage chute system. The new building also has a parking facility that can accommodate 260 two-wheelers and 60 four-wheelers.

Deputy CM Pawar will also inaugurate the newly set up mortuary of the hospital which is the largest mortuary in the state accommodating 137 corpses at a time.

There will be a facility to perform autopsy on nine deceased bodies to cut down the waiting time for the kin of those deceased. Along with a place to perform the last rites, the mortuary will have a facility to record and store data of deceased patients for over 32 years, said the officials.

Dr Vinayak Kale, dean of B J Medical College and SGH, said that it is a proud moment for them to have such a huge facility but it was never officially inaugurated. During Covid-19, the facility was made operational for the emergency situation.

“The inauguration ceremony will be carried out at 9.15 am on Friday. The new building, mortuary, BJMC Ground, pet scan centre, and a new department of interventional radiology will be inaugurated. Along with these new facilities, a new outpatient department (OPD) for transgenders will be inaugurated as well,” said Dr Kale.