Amidst the ongoing Amarnath yatra, the Ministry of Health & Welfare has been giving support to directorate of health services Kashmir, by enhancing staff, needed for constituting medical camps and building the capacity of manpower, for handling high-altitude emergencies.
This act is as per apex court’s directives, related to medical facilities given during the yatra.
This included the establishment of medical facilities at every 2 Km, en-route, deploying doctors from different states and constituting mortuary facilities etc.
Meanwhile, from the last two years, the EMR (Emergency Medical Relief) division has been trying to streamline the healthcare process for Amarnath yatra.
For example, at 2023, Additional DDG and Director of EMR did an on-site assessment of medical facilities constituted for the yatra. This assessment was conducted to ensure, that these facilities meet the necessary standards and can potentially deal with the health of devotees.
After 2023 assessment, streamlining of medical care arrangements and augmentation of coordination between medical staff from different states and Directorate of Health Services (DHS) was given priority.
In addition, it was important to give states the direct experience of cultural sensitivities and challenges in Kashmir.
In order to fulfill these goals, the first national level review meeting for the amarnath yatra was constituted in Sher-e-Kashmir international convention centre at Srinagar. This meeting was jointly organized by Directorate General of Health Services (DteGHS) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
This meeting witnessed the representation from 12 States or UTs, AIIMS, PGIMER, JIPMER, Central government institutions etc.
In this comprehensive meeting, the object was to discuss about the challenges, which persisted during the amarnath yatra and how medical care can be improved.
Moreover, the deployment of healthcare workers is usually conducted by DteGHS, MoHFW by inviting nominations from 12 states or UTs and 16 institutions. These workers are usually deployed in three shifts or batches.
This year at 2024, taking suggestions of MoHFW into account, DHS Kashmir with ONGC CSR support has constituted semi-permanent structures Baltal and Chandanwari for building base hospitals, which contains accommodation facilities for staff deployed for the yatra.
Emergency Situation
In order to deal better with emergency situation, understanding trends of diseases and dealing with health-related issues properly, a web-enabled data collection module of Amarnath yatra has been established. This module was made via National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) – Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme.
These IDSP/IHIP portals will be used for the current year data and for data comparison, which ultimately, will lead to an improvement of health facilities.
Currently, a training course on preparing healthcare workers for high-altitude medicines is being manufactured by EMR division along with DHS Kashmir team and several experts.
These training modules will then give e-certificates and will makes these modules mandatory for staff for their better understanding and preparedness.