Punjab Government has decided to link its Health and Wellness Centers with the first-of-its-kind ‘Tele-Medicine Network System’, from where the healthcare and treatment services of specialists would be provided through the multi-specialty hospitals and medical colleges.
Informing this, the state Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Thursday said that presently, on an average, one lakh patients are being treated in a month at the Wellness Centers and around 23 lakh patients have received preventive, rehabilitative and curative health care services for various diseases so far.
Giving out details about the state government’s flagship program, the Minister said that the Punjab Government has chalked out a program to convert all the 2,650 sub-centres of the Health Department into Health and Wellness Centers (HWC) in a phased manner by 2021.
To strengthen the healthcare services in the rural areas across the state, the Minister also handed over appointment letters to 519 newly-appointed Community Health Officers (CHO).
Sidhu called upon the newly-appointed officers to come forward and live up to their responsibilities at Health and Wellness Centers, where the standardized health services are being provided through Community Health Officer (CHO) along with a team of multi-purpose health workers (male and female) and ASHAs.
He said that the newly-selected officers have been imparted a special training program of six months by IGNOU. Notably, 861 sub-centres have already been converted into HWCs and 422 Community Health officers have been posted in these centers.
Now, the state will have a pool of 941 CHOs working in HWC-Sub centers.