MEDICAL STUDENTS ROPED IN

MEDICAL STUDENTS ROPED IN

1 Lakh Boost To Warrior Ranks

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad: 18.07.2020

The Gujarat government has taken the ‘all hands on deck’ approach by deploying students of medical, dental, and paramedical courses in the war on Covid.

Gujarat has crossed the 45,000-mark in terms of Covid cases and the state is facing an acute shortage of frontline medical teams.

The government’s decision is expected to create an additional frontline task force of about 1 lakh students in their first, second, third, and final years of undergraduate studies.

The Gujarat government’s department of health on Friday issued a notification to announce the decision.

The students roped in include those in MBBS, BDS, and BSc nursing courses. They will have to undergo a training programme before joining the mission.

The decision, however, is not likely to go down well with some students, especially in varsities such as Gujarat University where the final-year MBBS exams are scheduled next month.

Students of physiotherapy, homeopathy, ayurveda and other medical and paramedical courses will also be a part of this endeavor, the government notification said.

In the case of final-year MBBS and BDS students, the pre-deployment training period will last for five days. It will cover the areas of clinical management of Covid-19 and infection prevention and control. After undergoing training, the students will work under a nodal officer at dedicated Covid-19 hospitals.

The notification said that students of other courses will be trained in line with their study areas. The areas will include sample collection, packing and transportation; nursing; critical care; field surveillance and supervision; giving care to those in home isolation; and providing psycho-social care. As with MBBS and BDS students, other students will receive training tailor-made for this special deployment.

A central team is in the city to assess Covid-19 situation in Gujarat