Jammu Tawi | Sep 21: A central team of experts from the Union health ministry on Sunday reviewed Covid-19 control measures along with the financial commissioner health and medical education department Atal Dullo in six districts of Jammu region.
“Review was held through a video conference meeting with the district administration and health teams of six districts – Samba, Ramban, Kishtwar, Kathua, Rajouri and Doda. Focus was on the testing, surveillance of containment zones through of door-to-door survey,” said an official statement.
The central team headed, by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) director Dr SK Singh, and comprising joint director NCDC Dr Kinnzin, associate professor medicine (Pulmonologist), AIIMS, Dr Vijay Handa and Dr Mahesh Waghmare, IDSP, New Delhi, discussed various steps to be taken for containment and control of the spread of Covid-19.
They urged to focus on influenza-like Illness (ILI) /Severe Acute Respiratory infection (SARI) cases, 100 percent house-to-house survey, contact tracing and increasing the number of testing, especially with RAT. The team said the focus should be on data analysis and stepping up testing, contact tracing and surveillance of areas from where more cases are detected so that the chain of virus spread could be broken.
The team suggested various measures that could be implemented in the containment zones and asked to involve ASHA and field Health staff to identify influenza-like illness (ILI) cases so that testing of all can be done. Door-to-door survey was suggested for identifying high-risk people like pregnant women, the elderly and those with co-morbidities.
The working of the new Government Medical College (GMC) Kathua, GMC Rajouri, GMC Doda was also reviewed.
Dr Vijay Handa, associate professor, AIIMS, asked principals to focus on hospital infection control measures, donning/doffing and biomedical waste management. Further, he called for following SOPs by all the staff members, besides preparing and following the treatment protocols. They were urged to increase the isolation and ventilator beds so that referral is reduced to Jammu, also to follow referral protocol.
