Ludhiana soon to get 28 health centres to curb shortage of doctors

LUDHIANA: With an aim to deliver healthcare services for the people at their doorsteps, state government has decided to open 2,950 ‘Health Wellness Centres’ in the state and Ludhiana district will have 28 such health institutes in the first phase which will not only solve the problem of shortage of doctors but will also strengthen the health facilities in the state.

To run these centres, the nursing officers (staff nurses) are being trained by the health department at present under specially designed bridge program and once they complete their course, they would independently run OPD services in the sub-centres.

According to the information given by civil surgeon Dr Parvinderpal Singh Sidhu, a batch of 28 nursing officers under the guidance of Dr Kulwant Singh, are getting six-month training to become community health officers from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).

The said course will be completed by June this year and from October 1, 2018, the nursing officers will start functioning in health wellness centres.

Notably, the health department is facing an acute shortage of doctors in the state and some are not interested to work in rural areas. To fill this gap, the state government took a historic step of inducting nursing officers as community health officers after six-month training, imparted by IGNOU.

Apart from Ludhiana, the training is also being given in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Bathinda, Patiala, Ajitgarh, Faridkot and Gurdaspur. The academic counsellors (Civil hospital's doctors) were trained in Delhi and Chandigarh before they started giving training to nursing officers.

At present in Ludhiana, theoretical part of course has already been accomplished and practical exercise is being provided in Ghawaddi Primary Health Centre and Dehlon Community Health Centre. Then, six-day training will be given to them in sub-centres Jawaddi and Phullanwal and last exercise will be held at Salem Tabri Primary health centre.

The state health department has high hopes from the program to provide quality health services to the residents here.