Focus on providing comprehensive primary healthcare to patients visiting PHCs: CS

Srinagar, Sep 11: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, Wednesday took a meeting of National Health Mission (NHM) to take appraisal of the progress achieved under different programmes run under this mission.
Besides Secretary Health and Medical Education and MD, NHM, the meeting was attended by Director SKIMS; Principles of Medical Colleges; Director, Health Services, Jammu/Kashmir and other concerned officers.
During the meeting, the Chief Secretary impressed to make the primary healthcare more robust and comprehensive as there are around 4000 such facilities in the UT.
He asked for verifying the modalities whether the increased number services, free drugs and diagnostic tests are available in these Sub-Centres and Primary Health Centres across J&K. He asked for submitting a report shortly to him on this regard.
Dulloo also enquired about the status of the screening of population for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) as set under the programme. He called for pacing-up this process to meet the targets.
While taking note of the tele-services made available to the population he asked for creating necessary awareness among masses besides checking the quality of such services extended to the beneficiaries. He also directed for having critical analysis of the services offered and the kind of beneficiaries availing them.
The Chief Secretary further observed that the DNB seats offered in different institutions should be optimally utilized and in no case should these be left vacant. He asked for taking measures to stop the practice of leaving these courses halfway by the admitted candidates.
Moreover, he noted the progress made in generation of ABHA ids of the population here and its desired utilization. He enquired about the status of tendering of 102/108 ambulance services and the training of ASHA workers for provisioning of quality health services at the grassroots level.
Secretary H&ME, Dr Syed Abid Rashid Shah informed the meeting about the status of different projects taken up under this mission and those in pipeline. He also threw light on the monitoring mechanism in place to ensure the smooth implementation of the mission here in the UT.
While giving detailed performance made under this Mission, the MD NHM, Nazim Zia Khan informed the meeting that several health indicators had taken a quantum leap with the initiation of this mission here.
Besides the budget part, the meeting had discussion over the progress made in programmes like Maternal Health, Child Health, RBSK, Anemia Mukht Bharat, Prevention & Control of NCDs, JK e-SAHAJ, National Dialysis programme, Tele-MANAS, Tele-Radiology besides others implemented under the umbrella of NHM.