Health Minister inaugurates new health facilities to improve quality of healthcare services at PGIMER

“The government has given high priority for improving the Nursing and Midwifery cadre through skill development and continued professional development, stated Shri J P Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare.” He was speaking at the 1st convocation ceremony of National Institute of Nursing Education’, PGIMER, Chandigarh, here today. He stated that the government have undertaken major expansion of nursing and technical education leading to a three-fold increase in the numbers of nursing institutions and in the number of students passing out of these institutions.

While addressing the gathering, Shri Nadda mentioned that some of the initiatives undertaken for strengthening of nursing cadre are; establishment of ANM/GNM Schools, Upgradation of institutions from School of Nursing to College of Nursing, Training of Nurses, Development of eleven one year specialisation courses, Revision of curriculum for all nursing programs, New ‘Nurse Practitioner courses, Nurse Practitioner in Critical Care Program, Nurse Practitioner in Primary Healthcare Program, Nurses registration Tracking System (Live Register), and establishment of national PhD consortium for Nursing Research. The proposed ‘Nursing Practice Act’ will empower nurses and more reforms can be done in Nursing regulation, the Health Minister elaborated.

His visit is marked by addition of very important and valuable facilities in the premium Medical Institute of North India today. In the morning, he dedicated two more AMRIT (Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants) outlets at PGI. One in Nehru Hospital for providing generic medicines and orthopedic surgical implants and another in the Advanced Cardiac Centre  (ACC) for providing affordable cardio vascular medicines and implants making total number of such outlet three at PGI. The first shop which was established in April, 2016 has already crossed Rs.5 lakhs per day mark of value of drugs dispensed.

Health Minister also inaugurated SLEEP LAB in the Department of ENT for the diagnosis and surgical treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). This Lab is the first   to be started in ENT Department of North India. This Lab is designed to evaluate, diagnose, treat and help patients to manage OSA. The sleep study is a painless process conducted on the patient at night. In the next day he will received a complete sleep report with diagnoses of sleep related problems. Advanced Eye Center of PGI has been equipped with the femtosecond laser technology today which would ensure fast, accurate and predictable cataract surgery. This procedure commonly called as “Blade-less Cataract Procedure”/”Robotic Cataract Procedure”. Femtosecond Cataract Surgery helps to reduce the surgical complications and enhance the post-operative outcome in the complicated and challenging cataract cases. He specifically told that this facility is first of its kind in India which has been installed at the cost of Rs.7 crores. Health Minister also dedicated Kitten MRI/Mock MRI Scanner at PGI which is specifically designed to make MRI scanning safer and more child friendly. In this facility children will be exposed to the environment of MRI scanning before they are actually taking first scanning. This facility has been acquired at approximate cost of Rs.13 crores.

One of the major breakthrough achieved by the PGI today is in the form of Telemedicine facility with three remote locations, namely Community Health Centre, Pooh in District Kinnour of Himachal Pradesh; Pampa Hospital, Sabrimala in Kerala and Sheshnag base camp on way to Amarnath Shrine. Minister told that these three telemedicine nodes in remote areas have been established by Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in collaboration with Department of Space. These centres which have been connected with Telemedicine node at PGI to provide remote health care over telemedicine platform. Health Minister reiterated the resolve of his Government to strengthen Tertiary Health Care in all its premium institutions by inducting State-of-Art technology, training and capacity building of human resource and providing affordable and convenient tertiary health care through various steps.