State-level med officers engaged to monitor Health dept programmes

Kolkata: Health department has engaged state-level health officers in the rank of joint district health services who will visit various districts to assess and monitor delivery mechanisms of various ongoing health department programmes.

There will be a senior monitoring officer in the rank of joint director of health services (Joint DHS). There will also be a team of senior health officers who will be assigned to look after the districts. One joint DHS will look after 4-5 districts or health districts. There will be many officers in the rank of deputy DHS under the monitoring officer. Senior officials will visit various state-run hospitals and monitor service-related issues as well. They will carry out an evaluation at the hospitals and submit a report on the basis of their observation. Health department has issued an order recently mentioning the health facilities to be covered.

To ensure better infrastructure in the rural health sector, the state Health department has initiated the process of recruiting 1,800 general duty medical officers (GDMO) at the primary health centre (PHC) level to further boost up infrastructure in the districts. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently instructed the Health department to enhance infrastructure in rural areas to combat any possible Covid surge in the future. State government took up a massive recruitment drive to boost up health infrastructure. Health department had decided to induct around 6,000 vacant posts of health professionals, including GDMO at the district-level hospitals.

Incidentally, the Health department has already sent the new regulations to the Chief Medical Officers of health in all the districts giving them direct outlines as to what procedures the medical officers have to follow before the referral of a patient to another hospital.

The Bengal government is in the process of making ‘e-prescription’ mandatory in emergency wards of all government hospitals which will be under direct monitoring of the Health department. One of the main purposes of the move is to ensure no single case of patient referral is carried out unnecessarily.