A 42-year-old man by the name of Krishna Mahanta who hails from Kaliabor area in Nagaon district of Assam has pledged to donate 4 acres or 10 bighas of land to the Government for building a Coronavirus treatment hospital. He has written a letter to the Kaliabor Sub-Divisional Officer making the offer and the same has been forwarded to the ssam government.
Krishna Mahanta who is a businessman by profession wrote, “The entire world is now gripped by the deadly novel coronavirus and nearly a thousand people have been affected in India also. Our family has decided to donate 10 bigha land to the government to construct a Covid-19 hospital. We hope that the government will accept this.
A few days ago Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had announced that the govt is going to build five 300-bedded Covid-19 hospitals with ICUs and ventilators. He had said that while two hospitals would be set up in Guwahati and Dibrugarh, rest locations were not finalised and DCs in the districts have been asked to identify land in their areas for the rest 3 four hospitals. Seeing this, Krishna Mahanta and his wife decided to offer his plot for a hospital in Kaliabor, which is located in middle Assam.
He said that he has a plot of 10 bighas near the National Highway, and he is voluntarily offering that to build a Coronavirus hospital there. Mahanta said, “Money is not everything, money will come, but in this moment of crisis everyone has a duty. I am not doing this for publicity. Our health minister is doing so much, in front of that this is nothing.”
In the meanwhile, the state government has already selected five locations for the 5 hospitals which will be built within 2 months using prefabricated material. The selected locations are Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Silchar, Lakhimpur and Bongaigaon, and minimum requirement of land for the hospitals is 30 bigha.
As India spent the fourth day of the 21-day lockdown, central and state authorities are taking several provisions to contain the spread of Covid-19. Though Assam has not yet recorded a single positive Covid-19 case, the state government has stepped up its preparations to fight highly contagious Wuhan Coronavirus.
The health authorities in Assam, led by CM Sarbananda Sonowal and health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma have dramatically raised the efforts in this regard in the last week. The state government had already announced a complete lockdown from 6 PM on 24 March, on the same day that PM Narendra Modi announced nationwide lockdown from the next day.
On 26th March, Health Minister Himanata Biswa Sarma announced several measures that the government is taking to prepare for Covid-19. The state government has already started building a quarantine centre at the Sarusojai Sports Complex in Guwahati with capacity for about 700 people.
The govt has reserved several govt hospitals in the state with more than 5000 beds exclusively for Covid-19 patients, and MoUs have been signed with private hospitals to treat patients of govt hospitals for free. The govt is also training final year medical and nursing students to treat Covid-19 patients, and have already set-up a 50 bed ICU unit with ventilators in Guwahati Medical College and Hospital, and a similar 12 bed unit at MMC hospital in Guwahati in last one week.
