Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 18: In a major push towards strengthening and expanding healthcare delivery across Jammu and Kashmir, a comprehensive roadmap for health sector reforms was today discussed by the Health & Medical Education Department with Dr. V.K. Paul, Member, NITI Aayog, in the presence of Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo.
The high-level interaction focused on strategic interventions, technological integration, academic collaboration, and capacity augmentation aimed at ensuring equitable, accessible, and quality healthcare services across all districts of the UT.
The meeting was attended by the Secretary, Health & Medical Education Department; Managing Director, National Health Mission; Director, SKIMS; Principals of Government Medical Colleges; Executive Director, SMVDIME; Director Health Services, Jammu/Kashmir; CEO, State Health Agency, besides other senior officers.
Addressing the meeting, Dr Paul assured the UT of NITI Aayog’s full support in strengthening institutional capacities and developing human resources. He advised the Department to implement the healthcare expansion plan through a clearly defined hub-and-spoke model, with institutions frozen for specific roles and responsibilities. Emphasizing structured execution, he called for clearly detailing institutional activities to ensure time-bound progress toward predefined goals.
Dr. Paul also stressed the need for a flexible and collaborative framework, enabling institutions to seek support from one another and adopt best practices nationally. He urged the Department to go beyond the Terms of Reference of the high-level committee constituted by the UT and explore the establishment of advanced facilities such as Eye Banks, strengthening Forensic Medicine, and upgrading Emergency and Trauma Care services across healthcare institutions.
On the occasion, Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo sought NITI Aayog’s guidance on strategies to retain senior faculty in medical colleges, attract talent from outside the UT, and extend specialized healthcare services to far-flung, mountainous, and border areas.
He also acknowledged NITI Aayog’s crucial role in guiding the UT’s health sector reforms, particularly over the past few months, which resulted in the addition of dozens of postgraduate seats and hundreds of MBBS seats across medical colleges in J&K.
The Secretary, Health & Medical Education Department, Dr Syed Abid Rashid Shah presented a comprehensive overview of the initiatives undertaken following sustained consultations with Dr. Paul over the past several months.
He outlined progress in expanding tertiary healthcare services to district hospitals, augmentation of UG, PG, and DNB seats, and development of a robust governance framework. He also detailed the proposed roles, responsibilities, accountability mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation systems, and implementation timelines.
In another major development, facilitated by NITI Aayog, it was learnt that the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) has agreed to provide training to transplant teams along with continued technical support and mentoring.
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