JAMMU: The Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta today chaired a meeting to review the functioning of the Health & Medical Education Department and took stock of the physical and financial targets achieved this financial year.
The Additional Chief Secretary, Health & Medical Education Department, Director, SKIMS, concerned HoDs, Principals of all Medical Colleges and other senior officers of the Department attended the meeting.
At the outset, Additional Chief Secretary, Health & Medical Education Department gave a presentation drawing a picture of the functioning of the Department in general, and achievements under various sectors in particular viz. Health Institutions including Medical Colleges, NHM, Emergency Covid-19 Response Package (ECRP), National Ayush Mission, National Aids Control Programme, healthcare infrastructure development and other Centrally Sponsored Schemes.
While discussing ECRP, Chief Secretary directed Principals of all Medical Colleges and Director, Health Services to ensure that the status report with respect to medical equipment like ventilators, beds etc. human resource, oxygen plants, Liquid Medical Oxygen is made available to the concerned authorities within a day, so that any issue identified, is addressed, or an alternate arrangement is made in time, to cater to any emergent situation.
The Chief Secretary observed that Jammu & Kashmir has made significant progress towards achieving 100% coverage in immunization of children as per the National Immunization Schedule, and asked the department to launch a campaign reaching out to the people with an aim to cover all left out children within a period of 3-4 months. The Chief Secretary further observed that considering 94% of births in the Union territory are institutional births, the department should explore to make the immunization record of each child digitally available, which can be extracted to an application like DigiLocker.

KR Desk