Our 586 Health Units Help Us Serve The Remotest Parts Of The Country

Dr Anil Kumar, IRMS, Director General, Railway Health Services (RHS) elucidates to Prathiba Raju, on how RHS has been imparting healthcare services to the largest rail network in Asia and the world’s second-largest network operated under a single management

Can you give details of the healthcare services of RHS?

The Indian Railway Medical Service (IRMS) provides comprehensive healthcare facilities to about 67 lakh beneficiaries through our 125 hospitals and 586 health units which are spread across India. We have 16 zonal hospitals at zonal headquarters, each division has a divisional hospital which is tertiary hospital with super-specialty facilities and around 600 beds. Each zonal hospital has four to five divisional hospitals with 150-200 beds. Each divisional hospital will have two to three sub divisional hospitals with 10-15 beds. We cater to the primary and secondary healthcare. We attend to over two crore out-patients and 2.6 lakh indoor patients in a year. Over two lakh surgeries are performed in our hospitals. We undertake periodic medical examination for the railway staff, and the candidates who are recruited are classified into A,B and C categories. Moreover, medical examination are performed for 48,850 candidates and 1,33,761 employees.