To effectively tackle the onslaught of much-anticipated third COVID wave, Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan on Thursday ordered to immediately inoculate all the remaining healthcare workers and their families, besides stressing on the permanent and need-based improvement in the existing healthcare facilities in the State.
Mahajan, chairing a high-level meeting to review the preparedness of all four government medical colleges in the State, said that the health facilities have been further ramped up by up to 25 percent at each medical college, with a total of more than 1,430 Level-II beds, over 700 Level-III beds, including 262 paediatrics beds to effectively combat the possible surge in the deadly virus.
She said that additional equipment worth over Rs 20 crore was being purchased for all four medical colleges in the State to meet the future demand.
Heaping praises on the officials of the Health and Medical Education Departments for doing commendable job during these difficult times, the Chief Secretary asked both the departments to further upgrade and augment tertiary care facilities, especially those pertaining to children, fungal infection, oxygen supplies, manpower requirements, medicine stocks, other consumables and testing facilities before the state faces the onslaught of the third virus wave.
She directed to put in place adequate medical oxygen generation facilities at the medical colleges so that the oxygen concentrators can be shifted from there to other field hospitals.
Mahajan also asked to prioritize enhancement of specialist doctors through ongoing recruitments, which she desired to be completed within the next few weeks.
The meeting discussed the need of biomedical engineering services division, felt during the second COVID wave following which a stringent policy is being formulated for maintenance of medical equipment in future.
The ongoing work to install medical oxygen plants and requisite electricity supply was also reviewed in detail for each healthcare institution. Besides, various inter-departmental coordination issues were also ironed out at the meeting for expediting the infrastructure enhancement and recruitments.