A 12-member group of officials from Telangana’s Health Department is in Kerala on a two-day visit to learn from Kerala’s experience on the containment of COVID-19 and how the first three COVID-positive cases in the country were clinically managed by doctors here.
The team met Health Minister K.K. Shylaja and held discussions with her.
A statement issued by Ms. Shylaja’s office said that the State government had made all arrangements for the Telangana team to learn at close quarters, the containment strategies and precautionary measures adopted by Kerala to stop COVID-19, which had been successful in totally preventing secondary spread of the disease in hospitals and amongst the immediate families of the patients.
Ms. Shylaja explained that the entire State government machinery had worked in total harmony to ensure that the dreaded disease did not result in a nosocomial or community spread.
The government had followed the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO) but had altered it suitably to suit the State’s context too. The activities were coordinated at the district and State-level with a control room at the Health Department headquarters and others at district headquarters.
Call centre
One of the strongest measures adopted by the State government was to set up a call centre and helpline, which not only answered queries from the public on COVID-19, but also helped them by giving the necessary guidance on how they could seek medical care in case they fell sick.
The training given to Health Department staff in universal infection control measures, managing those on home quarantine, setting up of isolation wards, stockpiling of personal protective equipment (PPE) were all explained to the Telangana team.
The governments of Odisha, Delhi and Karnataka had also sought Kerala’s help in priming their response to COVID 19 threat.
Vigil
Ms. Shylaja maintained that rather than panic, what was required was constant vigil and focussed action.
As the first State which diagnosed and managed to contain COVID successfully, Kerala had a lot to teach Telangana, the Additional Commissioner Telangana GHMC, B. Santhosh, said.
He said that though Telangana was also following the WHO guidelines strictly, Kerala’s strategies to contain the virus and maintain the mammoth surveillance network was something all States had to learn, he said.
Those who held discussions with the Telengana team included the Principal Secretary (Health), Rajan Khobragade; the State Mission Director, National Health Mission, Ratan Kelkar and the managing director of Kerala Medical Services Corporation Ltd., Navjyot Khosa.
The team also studied the surveillance and screening arrangements readied in the airport.
The team is also planning to visit Alapuzha Medical College on Saturday.
