NIH to train clinical, hospital management staff

Maj Gen Ikram says similar training pre-Covid helped delay arrival of virus in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD:

The National Institute of Health (NIH) will train around 400 clinical and hospital management staff, which are working at different hospitals across the country, as part of a series of training and capacity-building workshops.

The workshops particularly focus on clinical preparedness, response to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) and to improve the health care system to “build back better” after the pandemic.

The first three training sessions under the series have commenced in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Multan, targeting the clinical specialists and top managers of hospitals so that they can strengthen and support health workers during the pandemic and beyond.

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A total of 15 training workshops are planned for Rawalpindi, Multan, Lahore, Quetta, Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Gilgit, Abbottabad, Swat, Peshawar, Karachi, Hyderabad, and Sukkur, during September.

NIH Executive Director Professor Major General Aamer Ikram said that preparedness is key to success. Before the pandemic, he said that the institute had conducted a similar series of training for points of entry in December 2019. This training, he stated, performed well and helped delay the disease’s penetration in Pakistan.

The workshops, Maj Gen Ikram said, will help health workers across the country establish Isolation facilities, diagnostic facilities, RRT deployment, treatment for Covid-19 patients at the district level, risk communication, infection prevention, and control against the pandemic.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2020.