Birth certificates from hospital now - Siliguri district hospital to give document from July 1

The CCU building of the Siliguri District Hospital

TT, Siliguri, June 2: Babies born at the Siliguri district hospital will be issued birth certificates at the facility from July 1, north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb said.

Earlier, birth certificates were issued from the Siliguri Municipal Corporation.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Rogi Kalyan Samiti of the hospital chaired by Deb yesterday.

“The Samiti has decided that birth certificates for newborns will be issued from here itself and the process will start from July 1. This has been done for the benefit of people who have to get the certificate from the SMC,” Deb said.

The district hospital sends records of births to the SMC at regular intervals. Parents of newborns have to apply for birth certificates by filling up a form and the civic body issues the birth certificates. The entire process takes around a fortnight.

“In the current system, it takes time for the hospital to send records of births to the civic body. The SMC sorts out the records and on receiving applications from parents, it issues the birth certificates. The process takes not less than a fortnight. Now, the hospital will be able to issue the certificates on the day of birth,” a hospital source said.

“In order to make the process quick, we are planing to set up a separate office only to issue the birth certificates,” he added.

Yesterday at the meeting, it was also decided that the number of beds at the cardiac care unit of the district would be increased from six to 10.

“The hospital has six beds at the CCU. We will increase the bed number to 10 very soon. Four new mechanised beds will be purchased along with equipment like cardiac monitor, infusion pumps and defibrillators,” the hospital source said.

The district hospital will approach the state health department for Rs 55 lakh to buy advanced equipment. “The hospital will be installing new equipment like digital x-ray, CT scan and dialysis machine. Even though we have got space ready for installing these machines, we need funds for electrical works. The RKS has drawn out an estimate of Rs 55 lakh for this purpose and we will soon send a proposal to the state health department seeking funds,” the source added.