India News | National Emergency Life Support Courses Launched for Doctors, Nurses & Paramedics

New Delhi, May 18 (PTI) Union Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar on Wednesday launched National Emergency Life Support (NELS) courses for doctors, nurses and paramedics.

Apart from the training modules, the program also includes developing training infrastructure in all states and Union Territories to implement the NELS course and creating a cadre of trainers to train doctors, nurses and paramedics working in emergency departments of the hospitals and ambulance services, a health ministry statement said.

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The Union Minister of State said that till now, health care professionals in the country had to rely on foreign modules and paid courses which were not only expensive but were also limited in scope to a handful of emergencies without considering needs and priorities of the India's population landscape.

“Therefore, realizing the Prime Minister's policy of 'Make in India' and 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', the NELS provides standardized curriculum which is based on Indian context and developed in India”, she stated.

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Pawar highlighted that the government is committed to continuous strengthening of delivery of COVID-19 and non-Covid essential health services, with the long-term goal of enhancing preparedness capacities to manage medical emergencies and thus minimise loss of precious lives, the statement said.

"It is the need of the hour that India embarks on creating a world-class, efficient, professional and integrated system, enabled by technology, for the care of any victim of an accident, emergency or trauma in any part of the country," she said.

Talking about the National Health Policy of 2017, she said that it envisaged the creation of a unified emergency response system, linked to a dedicated universal access number, with a network of emergency care, provision of life support ambulances and trauma management centres.

MoS (HFW) requested the states to send proposals for establishing NELS Skill Centres at their medical colleges and urged all Skill Centers to ensure that trainings are not only operationalised but also utilized to the maximum extent to improve the quality of emergency care services in the state, the statement said.

She also requested Disaster Management Cell to regularly interact with participating institutions and monitor their activities to make this a successful initiative.

The activities under the NELS entail developing emergency life support training modules for doctors, nurses and paramedics after experts' consultations and based on the Indian context, setting up and equipping skill centres in medical colleges under Center/States to impart skill-based training on emergency life support for all categories of health functionaries, the statement said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)