JAMSHEDPUR: Tata Steel has been always extending its healthcare facilities to the community, aided by many medical institutions and hospitals conceived under its healthcare agenda. The company has taken a step forward in enhancing the capacity of other such institutions which participate in healthcare of the society. Taking this initiative further, Tata Steel is supporting the construction of a nursing school at the premises of Mercy Hospital. In this regard, Mr HM Nerurkar, Managing Director, Tata Steel, handed over an amount of Rs 5 crores to the hospital authorities, on behalf of the Company.
There is a great demand in public and private sector for services of women in the form of qualified registered nurse, mid-wives and nursing assistant. Tata Steel’s determinations behind nurturing the building up of the training school will not only empower women but will also serve the local community. Tata Steel’s Tribal Cultural Society supports girls from the SC and ST communities who are pursuing nursing as a career. This donation by Tata Steel furthers the cause of Affirmative Action to which the company is committed.
Whilst providing medical care to the society, the motto behind setting up of the Nursing School was also to commemorate the hospital’s Golden Jubilee Year.
Mr HM Nerurkar, Managing Director, Tata Steel in his address to the gathering said that, “Tata Steel has taken up this initiative with a vision of helping the hospital become one of the fastest growing healthcare providers to a wider spectrum of the patient population. Investing in good care for health is investing in life. We have a longstanding commitment to improving health care and meeting the needs of everyone in the community and will continue to do so in future too.”
Tata Steel and Healthcare: The 900-bedded Tata Main Hospital is the life-line for not only the employees, but for the population of the entire region. Besides this, the company runs smaller hospitals at mining locations, urban clinics in Jamshedpur and mobile medical vans which together offer preventive, promotive and curative health care services including primary health care services to more than 500,000 rural people and specialized services like eye care, mother and child care, treatment on malaria and tuberculosis, treatment of cleft lip and palate cases and awareness on adolescent reproductive health issues. Tata Steel was the first company in India to work on population stabilization and family planning. In the past three years alone, more than 18000 couples have undergone operations with permanent methods of family planning. Similarly, in the field of HIV-
AIDS, high risk groups like truckers and female sex workers are addressed.
Mercy Hospital was set up in 1962, on land leased by Tata Steel, with the following basic objectives such as these- to perform works of charity, to provide best possible health care and treatment to sick persons at minimum cost without looking to earning profit, to conduct nursing and midwifery training courses especially to uplift tribal woman, empowerment of women, etc.
Over the last five decades of its existence, the Mercy Hospital, Jamshedpur has grown from a single Outdoor Patient Department to a 200 bedded hospital, with generous support from the Tata Steel and a few other organizations. Currently, the hospital runs departments of general medicine, general surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics and an Intensive Care Unit. The Hospital primarily caters to the poor and less privileged of the society. The Hospital also collaborates with Government for conducting various health programmes, whenever required. On an average, the hospital annually caters to 15,000 in-patients, 50,000 out-patients, and 3,000 new born cases.
