Rajasthan: From medicines to furniture, health department has a long list to prepare for third wave

JAIPUR: Anticipating the third wave, the health department is ensuring sufficient stocks of medicines that are commonly required for Covid treatment and effective in severe cases.

District and sub-district hospitals have been asked to store sufficient stocks of drugs such as enoxaparin, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, remdesivir, tocilizumab, amphotericin b and intravenous immunoglobin. A health department official efforts were being made to ensure sufficient availability of drugs in each district depending on the population size and the history of spread of Covid.

The health department is anticipating that they may require more than 6 lakh remdesivir injections for which they have started process of procuring it to ensure that if the third wave emerges, patients will not have to face difficulty in getting it. During second wave, the state had witnessed shortage of remdesivir injections.

The state government is strengthening healthcare facilities at more than 250 sub-district hospitals and community health centres for which the health department is making efforts to arrange equipment, furniture and pediatric medicines too.

From wheelchairs to crash carts, from BiPAP machines to nebulisers, from installing CCTV cameras to fire extinguishers, the health department has made a list of 48 such items for strengthening the healthcare facilities in rural areas and semi-urban areas.

Health department officials said as of now the situation seems to be under control as the state reported 15 new Covid cases in the past two days. Just after the second wave had started slowing down, the health department started preparations for the third wave. Learning from the experience of second wave, the health department is now installing oxygen concentrators and setting up oxygen generation plants.