Basic hand surgery facility will soon be available at all Primary Health Centres (PHCs) in the State to manage the spate of arm injuries in accidents and industrial mishaps, Principal Secretary, Health, V.K. Subburaj said here on Tuesday.
Inaugurating the Vertical Integration of Medical Education (VIME) project at Stanley Medical College, Mr. Subburaj said the ongoing training programme to impart basic hand surgery skills launched by the Institute for Hand and Reconstructive Surgery at Stanley had so far covered 657 doctors and 650 nurses in 18 of the 42 health unit districts in the State.
The training programme sought to address the acute scarcity of expertise to tackle the increasing number of patients reporting with hand injuries.
He pointed out that road traffic accidents that claimed about 1.50 lakh lives annually in the country also left around 8 lakh persons grievously injured and one of the major sites of injury was the hand.
S. Vinayagam, Director of Medical Education, stressed the importance of reaching specialised services such as trauma care and hand surgery to the rural areas. Purushotham Vijayakumar, Director of Medical and Rural Services, R. Krishnamoorthy, Head of Department of Reconstructive Surgery, Stanley Medical College, C. Vamsadhara, College Dean and A. Priya, Hospital Superintendent participated.
