The government of Jammu and Kashmir will set up palliative care and geriatric care facilities in each of 10 districts of the Jammu region, officials said on Friday.
To this end, a three-day programme was also launched to train doctors and paramedical staff, they said. The additional chief secretary of health and medical education Vivek Bhardwaj inaugurated the training programme, they said.
The programme is being conducted in collaboration with the Indian Association of Palliative Care(IAPC), Rohit Lahori, the head of the palliative care unit in the Jammu region, told reporters.
It is being conducted under the supervision of Sushma Bhatnagar, the head of the department of pain and palliative care, AIIMS, New Delhi, he said.
Faculty from different parts of the country have joined in the training programme to train two doctors and two nurses from each district of Jammu, Lahori said.
“This is the first of its kind of training in J&K,” he said. Bhardwaj appreciated the role of the Directorate of Health Services in starting these “much-awaited” services in the health sector.
The government hospital Gandhi Nagar is presently the only district hospital in Jammu & Kashmir that provides palliative care as a registered medical centre.
With PTI inputs.
