'70 patients suffering from Hepatitis C at Kalala village'

More than 130 blood samples have been collected by the state health department of the residents of Kalala village, Barnala suffering from Hepatitis C.

Madan Mohan Mittal, health and family welfare minister, during his visit at the 'Save girl child' campaign's concluding day function, informed that the more than 70 patients have been identified in the village suffering from Hepatitis C by our team.

"We have sent the samples to Government Medical College, Patiala for the test. Many people have died with the disease which is due to the drug intake with the same syringe. We have started awareness campaigns in the village and have also provided free treatments", he said.

Meanwhile he said that the department has decided to set up three regional warehouses for online inventory management system centres as a pilot project.

"In the initial stage, we are constructing three such centres in districts including Amritsar, Bathinda and Kharar (Mohali) for the storage and distribution of medicines. We will construct godowns from where the medicines will be delivered according to availability. Also online inventory management system will be placed to get proper online data and for monitoring the availability of drugs storage and distribution at various warehouses", he informed.

Mittal said that the central government agency would construct the centres according to the warehouses of Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation while MoU for setting up of online systems has been signed with C-DAC Company.

"The centres will get ready within five months after which almost all the major districts will have such centres".

He said that the online inventory management system would bring more transparency in the procurement and distribution of drugs and consumables and establish online link between state headquarter, regional warehouses and hospitals.

He added that the software would make a record of consumption, availability and demand of medicines in each hospitals and health centres.

"It will be helpful in knowing the past consumption pattern, deciding reordering levels, identifying fast and slow moving drugs, monitoring value of drugs drawn from the stores by the hospitals", he said adding that it would help in locating, tracking and status of drug inventory apart from tracking of supplies from the manufacturing premises", he said.

He also told that the department had recently recruited 300 MBBS doctors, 134 Ayurvedic doctors and four unani doctors.