The Jharkhand government has initiated the process of bridging gaps in Covid health care with fast declining cases.

Two committees have been formed to address the issues of exorbitant rates charged by private hospitals for Covid treatment and another committee to give recommendations for hospital infrastructure upgradation with focus on child care in view of the third wave of Covid likely to hit later this year.

“The committees will be led by senior IAS, Shantanu Agrahari and Bhuvnesh Pratap Singh as co-chairpersons (both MBBS, MD). They would be submitting their recommendations to the state health department by May 31,” said state nodal officer health department and senior bureaucrat, Siddharth Tripathi.

“Our focus would be to build more HDUs (high dependency units) in almost all the district hospitals having facilities at par with ICUs so that more and more Covid patients are treated at the primary level without putting load on big healthcare institutions. WE are also focussing on upgrading SNCUs and PICUs for children at sadar hospitals and government medical colleges and Hospitals,” said Shantanu Agrahari.

The committee comprising members from medical fraternity including Indian Medical Association and representatives of private hospitals will be fixing rates of Covid treatment in private hospitals.

“We are studying rate models of private hospitals as adopted by various governments including Tamil Nadu, Kerala and also studying the models of General Insurance Company (GIC) and would be finalising rates for Covid treatments for patients with commodities and other complications,” said Bhuvnesh Pratap Singh.

Jharkhand would also be launching mobile vaccination vans initially from the state capital of Ranchi.

“We would be pioneering in reaching out to interiors of the state in terms of vaccination campaign. We would be launching two mobile vaccination vans in Ranchi initially and seeing the response we would be introducing similar vans in other districts. The objective is to reach out to such locations, which fall in mobile network shadow area and online registration is not possible. We are primarily catering to the age group of 18-44 but would also be giving vaccines for those above 45 years too. The registration would be offline for both age group. The vans would have rolled out on Thursday but had to be postponed due to the inclement weather,” said Anjanyelu Dodde, nodal officer of state Covid-19 vaccine programme.