Skin bank a crying need : Minister

OST Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Oct 6:

Expressing grave concern over the rising incidence of burn injuries in the state due to social conflicts, Health and Family Welfare minister Dr Damodar Rout on Saturday strongly advocated the creation of a skin bank to ensure better treatment of burn victims.

“Since excision and skin grafting are the chosen methods of acute burn management, harvesting skin and its preservation has become the crying need”, he said while inaugurating a National Seminar on Burns conducted in association with the National Academy of Burns, India (NABI)at the Institute of Medical Sciences and Sum Hospital here.

Rout said it would not be difficult for the people to agree to skin donation since a number of people in Odisha have come forward for whole body donation for scientific research after death.

Citing an instance, the minister said a young man who died in an accident in New Delhi, had donated his skin shortly before death which later benefitted as many as 14 burn victims.

In his address, Dr Prabhat Shrivastava, senior plastic surgeon at the Lok Nayak Hospital and Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi said the number of burn accidents is second only to road mishaps while fire accidents are endemic to the Indian sub-continent.

As a vast majority of burn victims in the country are managed by general surgeons, the latter need to be trained in burn care, he said.

Vice-Chancellor of SOA University Prof RP Mohanty, who presided over the meeting, stressed on primary care of burn victims as it matters the most.

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