Vaccination card a must to get school admission in Kerala
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state government’s draft health policy, brought out on Tuesday, made it mandatory for all children to produce vaccination card at the time of seeking school admission. The move comes at a time when there are protests and campaigns against the government’s vaccination drive.
The Cabinet gave approval for the draft health policy submitted by a 17-member committee of experts headed by Planning Board member and Kerala University former vice-chancellor Dr B Ekbal. The policy focuses mainly on strengthening public health care system from the lower level.
The policy envisages three directorates -– Public Health, Clinical Services and Medical Education in modern medicine. According to the draft, the doctors at the primary public health centres, district medical officers, various public health-related programmes’ directors and assistant directors will come under the Directorate of Public Health. It was in September 2016 the government had constituted a committee for formulating the health policy. Though it submitted the draft to the government a few months ago, there was a delay in approving it.
Releasing the draft policy, Health Minister K K Shylaja said the policy gave importance to increasing healthy life expectancy of the population and bringing down the out-of-pocket expenditure.With regard to appointment of doctors, the policy calls for a Medical Recruitment Board. The appointments to medical colleges should be restricted to doctors having post-graduate degrees. It also says the affiliation and essentiality certificate given to medical colleges should be cancelled if they do not have the required faculty and patients.
The policy also envisages setting up a medical ombudsman for dealing with petitions related to services for bringing responsibility and transparency. The draft policy notes there should be a system for ensuring proper registration of private hospitals and standard of treatment, which has now been enforced through the Kerala Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act.As part of bringing down drug cost, more drug manufacturing units in the public sector should be set up in the state.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
■ Autonomous status to all government medical and nursing colleges.
■ Medical auditing
■ Kerala Unified Medical Practitioners Act proposed for unifying the existing laws related to Public Health
■ Introduction of trauma care centres at every 10 kms on state/national highways by roping in private hospitals