New Delhi, Jan 24 () Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday said that being a vast country with a diverse terrain and geography, India can have its own model for disaster or emergency response which can be emulated by other countries.
Mandaviya was addressing the consultative two-day workshop on National Emergency Medical Team (NEMT) India, here on Tuesday. The purpose of the workshop is to bring together all stakeholders of the NEMT initiative to deliberate on the policy, strategy, roles and responsibilities of the initiative and prepare a roadmap for integrating the needs of the country for disaster preparedness, aligning the health needs during disaster situations in concordance with standard disaster response.
“While it is important to learn from global best practices and follow Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), let us learn from the national examples of emergency and disaster response in the past few decades and enrich our model from learning and insights from these. The multi-sectoral and multilayered learning need to be incorporated in the training and capacity building modules of the national architecture of emergency response and management”, the health minister said.
He emphasised that “The India model can go beyond the prescribed SOPs and be more flexible and agile to respond to exigencies on the ground.”
The NEMT initiative aims to revamp the traditional responsive mode of healthcare manpower deployment in response to disasters and public health emergencies. NEMT is defined as a group of healthcare professionals providing direct clinical care to populations affected by outbreaks and emergencies as surge capacity in supporting the local healthcare system.
The workshop will deliberate on four crucial aspects relevant to emergency medical teams, System, Staffs, Supplies and Structure. This was the first meeting soon after the G20 Health Working Group meeting in Thiruvananthapuram from January 18 to 20.
Health emergencies prevention, preparedness and responses form one of the priorities areas under the G20 Health Track agenda.
avr/bg