The Koranti Hospital in Hyderabad has once again risen to the occasion when a suspected case of another infection was identified. The first suspected case of monkeypox in the State is isolated there.
Prior to this, the first suspected case of COVID-19 in the State was admitted there in January of 2020. And in May-2018, a person suspected to be suffering from Nipah viral infection was brought to the hospital.
The hospital was established in 1915 by British nurses during the outbreak of Cholera here. Superintendent of the hospital K. Shankar pointed out that back then it was located in another place in Nallakunta, and thereafter shifted to the current premises in 1929. And in 1996, it was renamed as Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases.
“Prior to that, it was called Fever Hospital or Koranti Hospital,” Dr Shankar said. ‘Koranti is a corruption of the word ‘Quarantine’.
For more than a century, people having infectious diseases such as chicken pox, measles, swine flu, or others have been quarantined here. To this day, people continue to call the health facility as Fever or Corenti Hospital.
When a suspected COVID case was admitted in January of 2020, Ward Number-7 there was designated as ‘Isolation Ward’ for the persons suspected with the infectious disease. Now too, the suspected case of monkeypox is admitted in the same isolation ward.
All blocks in the Fever Hospital, barring two to three blocks, are spread on one floor. The wards are categorized according to disease. For example, patients suffering from chicken pox and mumps are admitted in two different wards.
Each of the single floor ward is separated by large spaces around it so that chances for the spread of infections is cut down. The isolation ward for monkeypox cases too is in a remote corner. The Hospital Superintendent said that if the test results of the suspected case are positive for monkeypox, they can treat the patient as they have all the resources needed.
