Jharkhand’s premiere healthcare facility Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi will soon become the first government-run hospital in the state to offer Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) facility to critically-ill patients with severely damaged lungs, health officials said on Wednesday.

State health minister Banna Gupta recently asked the RIMS administration to procure at least two ECMO machines, used for artificial breathing, in order to provide the facility of this life support system to patients suffering from Covid-induced lung fibrosis.

“No state-run hospital in Jharkhand has ECMO support for patients at present. RIMS will have these machines soon and we will be able to save more lives,” Gupta said.

Through ECMO, blood is pumped outside of a patient’s body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. When a patient with damaged lungs is on ECMO support, the gas exchange happens outside the body through the machine instead of the lungs. Once the blood is oxygenated and carbon dioxide is removed, it is given back to the heart, from where it circulates to other parts of the body.

ECMO was used by several private and some government hospitals across the country to save lives of Covid patients during the first and the second waves of Covid-19, say doctors. State education minister Jagarnath Mahto, who is back in Jharkhand after his lung transplant at MGM Chennai, was also kept on ECMO support for several days in the Tamil Nadu capital.

Many patients suffering from lung fibrosis recover after being kept on ECMO for a couple of weeks, say doctors. Keeping patients on this life-support system buys time for finding a lung donor if the patient does not respond to ECMO and needs a transplant.

In Ranchi, only Bhagwan Mahavir Medica Superspecialty Hospital, a private hospital near Booty More, has an ECMO machine. Many other private hospitals in the state have also started procuring the machine after several deaths due to lung damage were reported in the state and other parts of India.

With RIMS getting the facility of ECMO, many patients suffering from severe Covid-induced respiratory ailments will not have to move to bigger cities for treatment, at least during the initial phase, doctors from the state-run hospital said. Even during the second wave of the pandemic, several patients had to move to Hyderabad, Chennai or Mumbai because very few hospitals in the state had this facility, doctors involved in the fight against Covid-19 said.

Doctors and technicians will also be imparted special training on operating the ECMO machines, said health officials.