By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Shri Mansukh Mandaviya released Post COVID Sequelae Modules in the presence of Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare. These modules will help in building the capacity of the doctors, nurses, paramedics and community health workers across India to deal with long term effects of COVID.
Expressing his happiness on the release of guidelines, the Union Health Minister said that these have been prepared to provide guidance to doctors and health care workers to deal with the issue of long term effects of COVID. He said that proactive and comprehensive treatment of COVID is required to ensure minimum side effects and no negative effect of the treatment.
He further added, “We have witnessed the consequences of Post-COVID effect in patients due to taking higher doses of steroids like cases of Mucormycosis. It is important to take medicines, with less or negligible side effects. If we are alert beforehand, it will be fruitful in tackling the future consequences of COVID. The perceptions related to Post-COVID that are perpetuating in our society like fears, mental health issues resulting due to COVID are important to be tackled. So, it’s important to understand these Post-COVID issues and resolve them. Efforts have been made by the resource persons across the country for the management of these post COVID complications to prepare post COVID sequelae modules. These are very specialized modules prepared by keeping in mind various fields of Healthcare Professionals.”
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar emphasized on the need to tackle mental health issues and to reach the last mile. She said, “This Pandemic has put an unprecedented challenge on our Health and Health Care System. Mental Health Care is a big challenge for a country with such a large population. We need to build our capacity to tackle this challenge of mental health. If the Frontline workers are equipped with proper knowledge and training, they can become a valuable resource in this fight against these post-COVID challenges. When we are trying to equip ourselves to fight against post COVID consequences, it’s also important to take these to the last mile. The training modules for mental health and other issues have been prepared based on the needs expressed by state health experts.” She added that we should all work together to ensure that COVID-19 becomes the last human Pandemic.
Shri Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, MoHFW, Dr. Sunil Kumar, DGHS and other senior officers of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were also present.
