Minister for Health P.K. Sreemathy said here on Sunday that four hospitals in the State would be among the first government-run hospitals in the country to get accreditation from the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH).
Ernakulam General Hospital and Cherthala Taluk Hospital are among the four hospitals for which the process of accreditation is on, said the Minister.
The other two hospitals are in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode.
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The Minister was inaugurating a training programme for medical technicians organised here by the Medical Laboratory Owners' Association.
She said that the process of getting accreditation should be a priority with the laboratories and hospitals in the State even in the private sector.
She suggested that more private hospitals should come forward to get accreditation from the Board.
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Accreditation process was a difficult one, but it would enhance the image of the hospitals and the general healthcare facilities in the State, she said.
The four government hospitals in the State are expected to get their accreditation within a short period of time.
She said that the government was ready to permit the opening of courses for medical technicians, provided the institutions followed the government directives on fee structure and admitted students to 50 per cent of the seats on the basis of merit.
The Minister said that the government was in the process of strengthening medical laboratories in all the government hospitals wherever they were already in existence. New laboratory facilities would be set up at government hospitals where there was none now.
The training programme for medical technicians is an initiative of the Association to strengthen the manpower in medical laboratories in the State.
Eighty technicians are participating in the training programme, which was held on Sunday. It would be a weekly continuing feature in the coming months.