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93 paramedics complete 90-day training

By Correspondent

SHILLONG, April 29 - A critical gap in the healthcare sector has been somewhat filled after 93 paramedics from Meghalaya, Assam and Mizoram completed a 90-day training on emergency medical service.

The training was provided in these three States by Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) funded by the World Bank under its Development Market Place programme.

Fifty-four paramedics from Assam, 29 from Meghalaya and 10 Mizoram have successfully undergone the training and have returned to their places of work in Government Hospitals in their respective States.

The objective of the training was to create a cadre of professionals who could take care of emergency cases, from the ambulance to the emergency room, handling such cases swiftly and more efficiently till a doctor arrived.

Incidentally, the report of the training has come on a day when a bus accident in Garobadha in Garo Hills killed one and critically injured 12 this morning.

However, when the injured were carried to the nearest CHC, reportedly there were no doctors and angry villagers pelted stones at the ambulance and the CHC, as the patients waited for over two hours for critical care.

Although such services are in existence in most hospitals, but it has been found that the time taken in handling such emergency cases is long thus putting lives in danger.

According to a survey conducted by EMRI, just 51 percent handled trauma care satisfactorily within 0-10 minutes before the training. The figure has risen to 79 per cent after the training. Similar improvements have been witnessed after training of the paramedics in chest pain cases.

Meanwhile, during the EMRI-conducted workshop here for these paramedics called Emergency Room Technicians, none of the senior State Government functionaries were present. MR Synrem, secretary and mission director Health and Family Welfare was scheduled to be the chief guest of the programme, but did not turn up, nor did he depute anyone else.

�Sorry to see there are no Government representatives in the workshop. Would have been better if they were here,� president ICARE, Toki Blah observed.

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