Gujarat: 2,800 final-year medicos to join battle against Covid-19

AHMEDABAD: With the number of Covid-19 cases crossing the 29,000 mark, the state government worked out a new strategy to deploy as many as 2,800 final-year MBBS students and interns with the health department.
With Gujarat being among the top three states in the number of Covid-19 patients, the state is facing an acute shortage of frontline medical teams to battle the coronavirus crisis.
“We have started region-wise training for around 2,800 final-year MBBS students who will be deployed for treatment of Covid-19 patients. By next week, they will be assigned duty in different regions,” said Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary, health and family welfare, Gujarat government.
The state government’s decision is in line with the ministry of health and family welfare’s recent guidelines which allow services of interns and final-year medicos for tackling the Covid-19 crisis.
The ministry’s guidelines, based on recommendation of Board of Governors (BoG) with Medical Council of India (MCI) suggest that interns being provisionally registered doctors, may be trained in clinical management of Covid-19 cases under the supervision of their faculties in Covid health facilities.
The BoG-MCI has also suggested that the final-year MBBS students may also be taught about Covid-19 management in theory and practice, under supervision of their faculties in Covid health facilities, but they cannot be assigned any clinical duties.
The BoG-MCI has compiled data according to which two lakh duly qualified and trained doctors are already available.
The gujarat government is also planning to use the services of final year nursing and physiotherapy students for Covid-19 patients, said sources.
A central team led by ministry of health and family welfare’s joint secretary Lav Agarwal is set to visit Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana between June 26 and June 29. The team will interact with state government officials and coordinate with them to strengthen ongoing efforts for the management of Covid-19 in these states. This decision came on Thursday after India registered its worst single-day increase in Covid-19 cases, recording more than 16,000 coronavirus infections, to push the overall tally to 4.73 lakh as the number of fatalities also jumped by 418.