Country’s first 24x7 ‘Health Mall’ to open in Kolkata

Joy Roy Choudhury - Kolkata

You must have heard about shopping malls, now you will hear about health mall. The country’s first health mall is going to open its doors in Kolkata, shortly. Located in South Kolkata, it will have everything related to healthcare, ranging from medicines to hospital beds.

This Rs 5 crore project is christened, ‘Alpha Family Health Mall’ and will be operational 24x7. The four-storeyed mall is the brainchild of a Howrah-based noted paediatrician Dr Vijay Kejriwal. Apart from medicines, the mall will store prosthetic care equipment, rehabilitation support kits, stretcher-cum-wheelchairs, oxygen cylinders, babycare goods, vaccines, health-food, feeding bottles and sterilisers.

The mall will also have facilities for diagnostic tests and indoor treatment facility for short periods of stay, besides storing artificial limbs. Doctors can avail of cardiac monitors, pulse oxymeters, ventilators and other modern equipment, apart from the routine ones for blood pressure and stethoscopes. Hospitals can get beds for wards and intensive coronary care unit equipment as well as hospital furniture like tables and lights for operation theatres.

The Company, Alpha Medical Services Pvt Ltd, also plans to set up a health city complete with a medical education unit and hospital equipment manufacturing plant. The Group has sent a proposal to this effect to the West Bengal Department of Health & Family Welfare for setting up a health city with a medical college, a training institute for para-medics and a hospital equipment-manufacturing unit. “We want to set up a integrated institute of medical sciences, including allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy and ayurveda departments,” Kejriwal said. The Group is in the process of acquiring land for the project.