Mumbai, April 5 (IANS): The Western Railway's Jagjivan Ram Hospital (JRH) here has become the first hospital on the Indian Railways to get the coveted National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH) entry level quality control accreditation, an official said here on Friday.

Western Railway General Manager A. K. Misra unveiled the NABH certificate in the presence of the Additional GM Prakash Butani, DRM Niraj Verma, Principal Chief Medical Director Dr. Hafeezunnisa, Medical Director Dr. Mamta Sharma, and other dignitaries.

Misra applauded the JRH medical team for becoming the first Indian Railway hospital for its staffers and families to bag the coveted NABH accreditation, and noted that the multitude of medical services provided here are at par with any private hospital.

Western Railway's Chief Spokesperson Sumit Thakur said that the NABH accreditation is a prestigious certification acknowledging the JRH's best quality care facilities for its patients, monitoring and examining to ensure the highest levels of safety and quality standards, and has been awarded to very few government hospitals. Established in June 1960, the JRH at Mumbai Central is a sprawling tertiary level referral hospital with 361 beds, including 32 ICU beds and other advanced facilities for patients. It caters to 8 Divisional and Sub-Divisional (secondary level) and 56 dispensaries (primary level) from the Western Railway's western zone stretching to Mumbai to Valsad, Dahod, Bhavnagar, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Ratlam.

Annually, it caters to nearly 2,00,000 patients not only from the Western Railway, but also other railway networks in the country.