Patna: Union health minister J.P. Nadda on Monday said drug-resistant TB centres would be opened in all district hospitals.
Nadda said this after a meeting with chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday at the CM's Samvad in which he discussed flagship health schemes and also talked about opening new medical colleges that would come up on the basis of central assistance.
"The workforce for TB programme will be almost tripled with recruitment of vacant block-level staff positions within three months. Successful interventions of Public Private Interface Agency of Patna will be expanded to all districts. Rs 5 crore has been approved under the National Health Mission from the Union government for this purpose in this financial year," said Nadda, while adding that the drive would also be conducted to find active TB cases in high-risk population in all districts.
Nadda also said that the Centre had approved 534 facilities for upgrade into health and wellness centre across 38 districts (including 334 at additional primary health centres, 176 at sub-centres and 24 at urban primary health centres) during 2018-19.
Nadda said a decision had been taken to accelerate the efforts of the central and the state governments to implement the programmes related to the elimination of kala-azar in the state by December 2018.
Nadda said that two programme study centres of Ignou were functional in Vaishali and Nalanda to train nurses and ayurvedic doctors as mid-level health providers and the number would be further increased. "To increase the number of trained mid-level health providers in the state, 13 programme study centres will be operationalised by the end of the year. A total of 45 nurses and 46 ayurvedic practitioners will be completing training in the January-June 2018 session," he added.
He spoke on increasing MBBS and postgraduate seats at AIIMS Patna. Nadda had a discussion over the upcoming super-speciality departments in Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, Bhagalpur, Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital and Anugrah Narayan Medical College and Hospital.
