HYDERABAD: Imagine one’s relative or a close friend sustains a serious head injury in a remote village or a not-so-well-connected urban locality. And they have absolutely no idea where the nearest hospital is. And even if they do, they are not sure whether that particular clinic or hospital has the facility to treat such injuries. In such situations, lack of information on hospitals and the availability of specialist doctors could prove fatal.
Quite scary! Isn’t it?
But thanks to an initiative of the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, such scenarios will be thing of the past.
The National Health Resource Repository (NHRR), a nationwide exercise which is being carried out in Telangana too, is a project taken up by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence to specifically address such issues.
Once this ambitious project of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is completed, people who are caught up in such critical situations will be able access all the information, the right hospital — private or government, the availability of specialist physicians, diagnostic labs and pharmacies, with just a tap on their mobile phone screens.
As of now only information on big government and corporate hospitals is available online.
Under the project, enumerators trained in collecting data have already started visiting every locality and street, even in remote villages, including those in Telangana, to collect the details of every healthcare establishment, which will be listed in National Health Resource Repository (NHRR).
According to senior regional director with Regional Office for Health and Family Welfare Dr Anuradha Medoju, apart from the details of the hospitals and clinics, the repository will also have details of available doctors, their specialisations, blood banks, diagnostics labs and pharmacies.
“Photos and location of these establishments in online maps will be made accessible to people. Those who are in a new locality or whoever want to know hospitals, clinics available around them would be able to know the details made available under NHRR,” Dr Anuradha Medoju said.
She said that the implementation committee’s first meeting was held recently and the enumerators were instructed not to ignore even a single lane or bylane.