BENGALURU: National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Dean (Research) Dr Raghu Padinjat on Wednesday urged students to remember the lessons learned during Covid-19 in responding to challenges in the future. Speaking at the annual convocation of the Institute of Allied Health Sciences at St John’s Medical College, he said allied health professionals have been an active part in fighting against the pandemic and they had been in short supply.
“Like most countries, we were unprepared to face Covid when it broke. It was not an easy task and initially, the NCBS-run diagnostic lab was run by PhD students and post-doctoral fellows on a voluntary basis. We were the single largest testing facility in the state apart from NIMHANS. It was very difficult to ask students to run a lab but also difficult to find enough people qualified to handle a diagnostics lab,” said Dr Padinjat.
He said it’s not sure when the next health crisis or emergency will be, but it is understood that it is not only important to have nurses and doctors. “We need a whole draft of individuals who are trained to a very high level in different aspects of medical technology and they will play an important role in any health situations that will arise in the future,” he said. He further said it was important to have more institutions and similar mechanisms to produce more allied health professionals who are well-trained.