Health insurance scheme extended to Lankan refugees outside camps

This would benefit those who have registered themselves with local police stations

The Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme has been extended to those Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who are living outside camps maintained by the State government.

Already, those living in the camps had been covered under the scheme.

This would benefit 34,826 persons, who have registered themselves with the local police stations as refugees.

A direction to extend the scheme to them had been issued by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, according to an official release issued on Saturday.

Posts to be created

As a sequel to the Chief Minister’s direction for upgrading 15 district hospitals on par with medical college hospitals, the posts of 105 super-specialty doctors, 183 specialty doctors, 60 doctors, three dentists, 443 nurses, 14 laboratory technicians and 18 radiographers would be created. An order had also been issued for creating the post of radiographers in 98 government hospitals and that of laboratory technicians in 13 hospitals, where there were no such posts.

For intensive care units for maternity, in 55 of 105 government hospitals that were providing Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (CEmONC) services, the Chief Minister ordered the appointment of 220 nurses, at a rate of four nurses a hospital.

Maternity hospitals

As the maternity units of the Salem and Madurai government hospitals and the Egmore maternity hospital had been upgraded into those offering CEmONC services, 49 specialty doctors and 110 nurses would be posted additionally. Eighty-four more doctors would be appointed following the decision to extend the arrangement of having four doctors per maternity unit in nine government medical college-hospitals to other such institutions. These doctors would take care of high risk mothers.

In view of the construction of additional buildings for 56 hospitals coming under the Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services, the strength of in-patients and out-patients has gone up considerably.

To provide best medical services, the Chief Minister cleared the proposal for posting 167 nurses more to these hospitals. The stipend for students of nursing institutions attached to various government hospitals in the State had also been increased.

For the first-year students, the amount would go up from Rs. 400 to Rs. 600; for the second year, from Rs. 440 to Rs. 700, and for the third year, from Rs. 480 to Rs. 800.

This would benefit 1,935 students every year and the additional annual expenditure would be about Rs. 60.37 lakh.