Minister opens simulation block for cardiac care at International Training Centre

Tirupati: During its silver jubilee year, Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) achieved another landmark by opening ‘SVIMS Simulation System – S3’ which is the second one in the state after NTR Health University, Vijayawada.

It is an International Training Centre (ITC) which got its approval from American Heart Association (AHA) which is a non-profit organisation in the United States (US) that establishes ITCs in different countries in collaboration with different medical institutes to provide training in Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) courses.

SVIMS will become the only centre in the state to provide ACLS as NTR Health University was providing only BLS. These courses will spread the knowledge of cardiovascular diseases including stroke, their prevention, treatment to reduce disability and deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and stroke.

The ITC was established in an area of 5,000 square feet with a total outlay of Rs 6 crore provided through Sri Balaji Arogya Varaprasadini Scheme. The BLS is the foundation for saving lives after cardiac arrest which reinforces healthcare professionals understanding of the importance of early Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation.

The training process will be carried out with mannequins, which SVIMS already procured sufficiently. “AHA was having rigorous guidelines which have to be pass through and they came here four five months ago and after a long process they have approved it in December. Last weekend, we have conducted training for 24 people in BLS courses and another 22 people in ACLS courses.

We are opening this for not only our faculty and students, but for other institutions. We will train trainers first to create capacity with our own faculty and they will train others so that things will multiply,” said the Director-cum-Vice-Chancellor Dr TS Ravikumar. Meanwhile, they are getting external faculty to train SVIMS faculty and students.

SVIMS on its own was already going ahead with training several persons including doctors, nurses, technical staff and even going to universities, colleges and even apartments with CPR programme and so far trained 12,000-13000 people in Tirupati and our target is 25000 people. It is an emergency procedure performed to maintain blood circulation and flow of oxygen to heart, brain and other vital organs of the body.

This procedure is performed when a person is suffering from respiratory and cardiac arrest due to heart attack or heart stoppage from other reasons. The Director said, “This community CPR will be taken out in a big way at the Mahati Auditorium on February 26 on the occasion of its foundation day with 200 limited use mannequins with 200 trained people.

With each mannequin, we can train about 4,000 people and it will be very useful in case of cardiac emergency And, this process will help saving the life of a patient until the full help arrives. This is the basis for CPR,” Dr Ravikumar said.

All the first responders like policemen, students, their family members and every citizen should be aware of this CPR. The SVIMS Simulation System at ITC inaugurated by Health Minister Dr Kamineni Srinivas in Tirupati on Tuesday and several dignitaries from AHA will visit SVIMS later this year in taking the initiative further in a big way.

By V Pradeep Kumar