Dr J Chitra Posted as Medical Director at Southern Railway's Perambur Hospital

Dr J Chitra, an officer of the Indian Railway Health Service (IRHS), has been posted as Medical Director (MD), Perambur, on Southern Railway (SR). She was until now designated CS, Perambur, on the same railway, so the order changes her post and leaves her station unchanged.

Perambur in Chennai is the site of the Southern Railway Headquarters Hospital, a 500-bed facility on Constable Road that serves as the zone's main railway hospital. The Medical Director's post there is the senior hospital administration job at the facility, answerable to the zone's medical department.

The hospital has a long institutional memory. It began in 1928 as a 40-bed hospital for staff of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, with one senior surgeon, four assistants and twelve nurses. Over the decades it added specialist departments, among them a cardiac surgery unit that Madras Musings has described as recognised for its low mortality rate.

Chitra's previous post was CS, Perambur. Both positions sit inside the same Southern Railway medical establishment, which makes this a step within the hospital's administrative ladder and not a transfer between zones. The order summary does not list her earlier postings.

The incoming Medical Director takes over a hospital whose replacement has been discussed for more than twenty years. A new Southern Railway Headquarters Hospital was envisaged in 2005 and sanctioned with a built-up area of about 500,000 square feet. Southern Railway also announced plans in 2009 for a medical college on the existing premises.

Chitra belongs to the IRHS, the cadre that staffs railway hospitals and health units. The posting is on Southern Railway itself, with Perambur as the station.