Coimbatore has been included for a countrywide pilot project under the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular problems.
The other four districts in the State chosen for the project are: Virudhunagar, Tuticorin, Tiruneveli, and Theni.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and Stroke is being implemented in 100 districts across 15 States/Union Territories with the expenditure being shared by the Union and State Governments in the ratio of 80:20.
Deputy Director of Public Health R. Damodaran told The Hindu here on Saturday that the decision to include Coimbatore was taken at a meeting of the Department of Public Health held in Chennai on June 19 and 20.
The ongoing State-level NCD campaign would be merged with the Central programme in these five districts from July.
Sixty nurses already recruited for the State-level NCD campaign in Coimbatore would be roped in for this project. The staff nurses who will work on this project have to enter their activities in the Health Management Information System (HMIS) on a daily basis. The National Institute of Epidemiology in New Delhi, which is supervising project implementation, would appoint a statistician for every district to monitor the online data entry and analyse them. The statistician would conduct periodical field visits.
Dr. Damodaran said that according to the NUHM, one urban primary health centre must be established for every 50,000 urban population and a community health hospital for a population of two lakh.
The NUHM would cover only the corporation and municipality limits. Deployment of staff nurses would be based on the workload of the health centre, he said. Those working for additional hours would be given additional pay.
Dr. Damodaran said that NCD campaign had achieved considerable results and covered a large segment of the population.
All cases of suspected malignant and non-malignant breast cancers patients were immediately referred to a tertiary care centre for confirmation, he added.
