Jammu, April 25: Lieutenant Governor, Girish Chandra Murmu today called for devising a robust mechanism for door to door survey under Swasthya Nidhi for effectively combating the spread of COVID-19 in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. He was chairing a meeting to review the progress made under Swasthya Nidhi-an Integrated Health Audit & Intensive Screening Framework, at the Raj Bhavan here today.
BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Secretary; Atal Dulloo, Financial Commissioner Health and Medical Education; Dheeraj Gupta, Principal Secretary to Government, Housing and Urban Development Department; Sushma Chauhan, Deputy Commissioner, Jammu and Bhupinder Kumar, Mission Director, NHM J&K attended the meeting.
The Lt Governor directed for mandatory PPEs for screening teams as they are the frontline warriors and are vulnerable to the virus. He stressed on the need to increase the sample collection teams to intensify the screening and called for incorporating IEC material, messages and jingles in surveys and publicizing widely through print media, electronic, social media and other effective forms of media. He directed for making the survey more informative and comprehensive as it would become a ready database for future health related information and welfare schemes. He also directed the officers to aware people about the coverage of COVID-19 under PMJAY-Ayushman Bharat, besides other health related advisories.
“All the teams are required to mandatorily encourage the people to download the Aarogya Setu App, besides exhorting them to take AYUSH immunity boosters for self care during the COVID-19 crisis,” he added.
The chair was apprised about the necessity of undertaking repeat surveys and health audit of large areas and Swasthya Nidhi provides an ideal platform to reach out to each household in the UT for IEC. It was informed that the Pilot based survey in Jammu was launched on 17th April for 5 Hotspots, covering 29 Electoral Booths, which has been completed on 22nd April. The survey has been started in 7 Districts of the UT.
The chair was further briefed about key aspects of Swasthya Nidhi including Household surveys by Booth level Awareness Groups (BAGs), integrated data sharing, GIS Enabled Time Stamping, home visit of COVID OPDs, self reporting, Corona Kavach etc. It was further informed that Geo-tagging of households with time stamp is being done and around 50-60 households are being surveyed daily by each team. Discussion was also held on the procurement of RNA extractors for enhancing testing capacity for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the Lt Governor appreciated all the Corona Warriors of the UT who have been working tirelessly for containing the virus. It was briefed that J&K become the second-highest State/UT after Delhi in terms of COVID testing per million population.