12.1 The Rao Tula Ram Memorial Hospital being the district hospital for South West District of Delhi has a key role to play along with DDMA (SWD) in Disaster Management. Hospital has a disaster plan ready for both internal and external disasters through a disaster management committee under the Medical Superintendent.
The South-west District is identified as one of the disaster-prone districts by virtue of its location in seismic zone-4. Besides presence of huge quantities of fuel stored by Indian Oil and other Oil companies, and Indira Gandhi Domestic and International airports also being there in this district makes it vulnerable to disasters. The nearest larger public hospitals are DDU Hospital (about 25 KM) and Safdarjung Hospital (35 Km) and AIIMS Trauma centre (35 Km).
The hospital participates in mock exercises for disaster preparedness conducted by DDMA, NDMA and District Health Authorities. The disaster handling abilities of the hospital were put to test in Feb. 2012 when disaster occurred in a village Mitraon near the hospital and about 250 patients suffered acute food-poisoning. The hospital staff responded to the situation and managed all 250 affected cases. But still a lot is to be done for the hospital to be fully prepared to handle all types of disasters for which the hospital has made adequate arrangements in the plan of the new ward block. There is a plan afoot for vulnerability assessment (both structural and non-structural) of the hospital.