TAMIL NADU COVID-19 TRACKER

Nurses to advise pregnant women on hospital visits

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:27.03.2020

In the next two months, at least 1.5 lakh pregnant women in the state are expected to give birth. Nearly 11,000 women have been tagged as “high-risk” by doctors in the state registry Pregnancy and Infant Cohort Monitoring and Evaluation (PICME).

The state health department charted out a series of micro and macro level plans for these women. “All pregnant women will have calls and visits from our nurses. They will be advising them not to visit government hospitals or primary health centres in the morning,” said health secretary Beela Rajesh. Those visiting private hospitals will have to work with their doctors and ensure they don’t wait in crowded OPs. “All fever and Covid-19 out-patient clinics in government will close in the morning and space will be used for pregnant women in the afternoon. Scans will be scheduled for them in the afternoon,” she said.

Pharmacies will dispense medications for a month so they don’t have to return to the hospital just to pick up their pills, she said. Similar protocols will be followed by post-transplant patients.

Pregnant women visiting state-run antenatal clinics will now be categorised as red (high risk), yellow (moderate risk) and green (safe). Since a woman can continue to remain in green or move to yellow and red any time during the pregnancy, village and urban health nurses will keep a keen watch. All high risk cases will be monitored by a senior gynaecologist and delivery will be at a tertiary care centre. “Government will pick up women who go into labour in special vehicles or ambulances,” Beela said.

Only women tagged green will be allowed to deliver at primary health centres, where staff will be mentored by gynaecologists. Obstetricians-gynaecologists from sub-district, district and medical college hospitals will be allotted health blocks based on the geographic location of the hospital they are posted for the training. Each doctor will have a group of clinics and staff. All mothers will be seen by a doctor at least once.

“The plan is to continue monitoring the women and have access to case sheets of all pregnant women. We are putting everything on a dashboard to make monitoring easy,” Beela said.