- COMMUNITY HEALTH OFFICERS TO RUN OPD SERVICES IN THESE CENTRES
- TRAINING OF NURSING OFFICERS IS ON UNDER BRIDGE PROGRAM
- RURAL AREAS HAVING SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS TO GET BENEFIT
LUDHIANA, MAY 27 (CNI) : Aiming to facilitate the health services to the people at their doorsteps, Punjab Government has decided to open 2950 ‘Health Wellness Centres’ in the state and Ludhiana district will have 28 such health institutes in first phase which will not only solve the problem of shortage of doctors but will also strengthen the health facilities in the state.
To run these centers, the nursing officers (staff nurses) are being trained by the health department at present under specially designed bridge program and once they complete their course, they would independently run OPD services in the sub-centers.
According to the information given by Civil Surgeon Dr. Parvinderpal Singh Sidhu, a batch of 28 nursing officers under the guidance of Dr. Kulwant Singh, are getting six-month training of Community Health Officers from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).
This course will complete in June this year and from October 1, 2018, the nursing officers will start functioning in health wellness centers.
It is pertinent to mention here that health department is facing acute shortage of doctors in the state and if it has, some of them are not interested to work in rural areas. To fill this gap, the state government took a historic step of inducting nursing officers as community health officers after six-month training, imparted by IGNOU.
Apart from Ludhiana, the training is also being given in Jalandhar, Sri Amritsar Sahib, Bathinda, Patiala, Ajitgarh, Faridkot, and Gurdaspur. The academic counselors (Civil hospital’s doctors) were trained in Delhi and Chandigarh before they started giving training to nursing officers.
At present in Ludhiana, theoretical part, of course, has already been accomplished and practical exercise is being provided in Ghawaddi Primary Health Centre and Dehlon Community Health Centre. Then, six-day training will be given to them in sub-centres Jawaddi and Phullanwal and last exercise will be held at Salem Tabri Primary Health Centre.
Right now, sub-centers are being operated by one ANM and a multi-purpose health worker due to which people avoid visiting them hence they start ignoring their health problems or approach private doctors who usually exploit them.
The state health department has high hopes for the program to provide quality health services to each resident here.
