Hospital Based IMNCI

The ARI /CDD Program, DoPH, is in the process of  preparing manuals for the Hospital based IMNCI( Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illnesses) which is likely to be implemented beginning later this year in some of the district hospitals in the country. Two hospitals each in the east, west and the central region have been selected to initially start the program.

We recently met in Paro to finalize the manuals for the same. This strategy is aimed to equip the general doctors and clinical officers in the district hospitals with basic management skills in Pediatrics especially in the absence of a Pediatrician. The initial training in this regard is expected to begin sometime in October this year.

Easing Nursing Services

The Labour  Ministry's announcement to train 268 GNMs in India by 2013 should come as a good news for the  health sector and the nursing fraternity. This should have come long before we planned to build these large state-of the-art hospitals like JDW or MRRH which are  now fully  functional but with a large shortage of nursing staff.

With this announcement, I guess atleast the shortage can be reduced by about 50 percent in few years time.

Mongar Hospital has acute shortage of  nursing staff in most of the wards including the ICU. NICU and Cabins could not be started solely because of the nursing shortage.

UNICEF Rep visits MRRH

Dr. Gepke Hingst, UNICEF Representative in Bhutan , visited the hospital on Friday and spent time in the MCH following up on the Pentavalent Introduction. She was interested to know if anything adverse or otherwise happened after the re-introduction. She also had a brief discussion with me on main areas of Pediatric Morbidity and Mortality. She found some time to go around the new hospital complex as well.