Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Government Tuesday asked the officials to make the Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign against Covid-19 more prescriptive and useful for the people already infected by the virus.
Reviewing the awareness building and IEC activities under implementation in the state, Chief Secretary S C Mahapatra said the prescriptive and service-oriented IEC campaign against covid-19 is equally crucial for appropriate management of the covid scenario.
He said as many patients were in home isolation, they should be very clearly informed about the norms of isolation, daily care like measuring of oxygen level, which number to contact for getting doctor’s advice, what precautions to take, what to do at the time of emergency, and how to avail emergency services like ambulance, hospitalisation.
The people should be clearly told about care of the old, elderly, pregnant women, and persons of co-morbidity.
The Chief Secretary said the IEC campaign should also contain the telephone numbers of the persons whom a patient in home isolation could contact for getting health services.
The rapid response teams (RRTs) were advised to form area wise WhatsApp groups taking all positive patients so that the patients could communicate their health condition to the RRTs.
The department was also advised to put district and ULB specific telemedicine numbers in the IEC campaign which the patients could use at the time of emergency.
This information, Mahapatra said ”will give more confidence to covid positive tested people in home isolation, and will be more helpful for their early cure”.
Principal Secretary Information and Public Relations Bishnupada Sethi said appropriate contents would be redesigned in collaboration with State Institute for Health and Family Welfare (SIH & FW) for different media and audiences.
Additional Chief Secretary R K Sharma asked the SIH & FW to provide the health-related technical inputs for IEC campaign in view of the changing covid scenario, and service requirements of the people.
UNI