Coronavirus | Modi urges doctors to take up oxygen audits, telemedicine services

Doctors brief PM about best practices, experiences including proper and improper use of medicines.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday interacted with doctors across the country dealing with the second wave of the pandemic, urging them to include oxygen audits, forming teams to provide telemedicine services to those undergoing home isolation and in rural areas and the new challenge of mucormycosis. The meeting, held over video conferencing, saw the Prime Minister also stressing on psychological care along with physical care. “This long battle against the virus must be challenging for the medical fraternity, but the faith of citizens stands with you in this fight,” he is reported to have told the doctors. He appealed to doctors to form teams for telemedicine, train final year MBBS students and interns to ensure that all tehsils have telemedicine services, and that home isolation should be guided by SOPs (standard operating procedures). He briefed doctors on the efforts being made to ramp up capacity of medical resources required, and said vaccination of health care workers had paid dividends in terms of safety. The doctors shared best practices and their experiences through both the waves of the pandemic, including proper and improper use of medicines.