The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Training module for health panels ready

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Sunday, Aug 24, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Training module for health panels ready

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: The State Government is keen on strengthening the community-based monitoring of public health system in the State. Even as a consortium of non-governmental organisations has finalised the training module for members of community health monitoring committees, the training programme will soon start.

Speaking at the inauguration of a training programme for enforcement officers in the Drugs Control Department here on Saturday, Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) M. Madan Gopal said government hospitals – central as well as State – lacked proper monitoring. As a result, government healthcare products are not being delivered properly to the people.

Village Health and Sanitation Committees at primary health centre level and Taluk Arogya Raksha Samitis at taluk-level hospitals were constituted and the members would undergo training in various healthcare-related issues. The priority would be to ensure supply of potable water, clean toilets and clean beds at these hospitals. The committees would work towards addressing various issues other than hospitals, like the problem of transportation in reaching a hospital, he added.

The experience of running 1,000 PHCs round-the-clock in the State was heartening as many people got benefited. With this, the Government will convert at least 190 taluk-level hospitals as first referral hospitals with the presence of a gynaecologist, an anaesthetist, a blood bank and other required infrastructure.

This, Mr. Madan Gopal said, would ease the pressure on district hospitals.

Mr. Madan Gopal said as per the department’s estimate, over 40 per cent of the childbirths occurred at home. “Although this is not wrong, what we insist is on safe delivery.” Hence, the Government would be ensuring availability of a trained attendant at the village-levels to conduct deliveries.

Karnataka would be the first State to house drug testing laboratories outside the State capital when laboratories were inaugurated in Hubli and Bellary next month-end.

While the laboratory in Hubli would concentrate on testing of medical equipment, the one in Bellary would concentrate on cosmetics, he said. Inaugurating the training programme, Karnataka High Court judge V. Gopala Gowda stressed the need for amending the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. He said the Centre and the State governments should be aware of the changing trends.

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