CHENNAI: In an effort to reduce the Covid-19 mortality rate in the State, all Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in Chennai will follow up with their patients who have co-morbid conditions such as blood pressure and diabetes, from now.
Corporation Commissioner G Prakash on Saturday inspected the slum-focused containment strategy’s operation at Nochi Nagar in Teynampet zone, along with special nodal officer for the corporation J Radhakrishnan.
“The doctors, nurses and other staff in each PHC will split the follow-up work among them and provide the patients medicines for a month in advance,” Prakash said. So far, a list of around 1.75 lakh patients with co-morbid conditions has been made by the 140 PHCs here, he added.
Special attention will be given to the 8 lakh senior citizens in the city. “We have partnered with HelpAge India, an NGO, for closely monitoring their health. The team would phone the elderly once every four days and ask health-related questions,” the corporation commissioner further said.
The commissioner also maintained that the civic body had traced the source of all Covid-19 patients’ infection so far, and so there was no reason to believe community transmission has begun. When asked if contact tracing was becoming a challenge with the number of cases on the rise, J Radhakrishnan said, “We are able to finish contact tracing within 24-48 hours of a patient testing positive. On Saturday alone 3,826 tests were conducted in the city.”
