Nagaland: Retired docs & med students volunteer for service

Members of Nagaland Medical Council (NMC) mobilizing health professionals volunteer to give their services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Vishü Rita Krocha
Kohima | April 21

Responding to the government’s call for doctors to volunteer in the public health sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nagaland Medical Council (NMC) is mobilizing health professionals who have volunteered to give their services. 

The volunteers include retired doctors, nurses, young professionals who haven’t joined service yet, dental surgeons, pharmacists, fresh MBBS graduates and final year students.

Dr P Ngully, a senior doctor &consultant psychiatrist along with Dr. Joyce Zinyü Angami, President, NMC and Dr. Sashimeren Aier, Vice President, NMC are overseeing how best the health professionals can volunteer. 

“One thing that we realized was that the whole department (Health) is preoccupied with COVID-19 and we could see that they are so stressed out. We didn’t want to overburden them,” said Dr P Ngully. 

“We realized that the general health care is being neglected. There is social distancing; communication and transportation is limited now. So, we decided that we should try to run an outdoor patient consultancy service wherever there are volunteers,” he added. 

In Kohima, the Agri Health Sub-Centre and Para Medical Training Institution have been identified for the outdoor patient consultancy service and began functioning April 21 from 9:00am to 1:00pm. To do this, the NMC tied up with the CMO and have been given basic medicines to run the centres. They also received masks and hand sanitizers from the CMO.

Altogether 19 health professionals have registered as volunteers in Kohima. Apart from these two centres, the Urban Health Centres in Porterlane and Seikhazou are already running.  

The team also had a meeting with the 10 health professionals who have registered to volunteer in Dimapur. They will be running the OPD in Diphupar health sub-centre and Kachari Gaon from Wednesday.

While thanking the volunteer health professionals, Dr Ngully said “this will continue till the health department is normalized to give its services to the people.”

Later in the week, the team will travel to Wokha and Mokokchung to meet with more volunteer doctors and work out the modalities. In Wokha, 4 doctors including a retiree and 3 others who have not joined service yet have volunteered, while two doctors, both of whom previously served in the medical department, have also stepped up. 

He meanwhile pointed out that there is need to “demystify the coronavirus.” Towards this end, he added, “we are soon planning on how to bring out proper information and proper knowledge about it.”

Any healthcare professional who wishes to volunteer can send a message mentioning name, age/sex, qualification, and address to the following WhatsApp number: 940224 5812.

It may be mentioned that the service provided is complementary to the arrangement of specialist consultation in Urban Primary Health Centres, routine services continuing in all other non-COVID health centres, and PMJAY services in empanelled private hospitals.