By IANS,
Chennai : All 30 districts of Tamil Nadu will have a special poison treatment centre, the state health department announced here Friday.
The state government’s directorate of public health and preventive medicine would set up the poison management centres with support from the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
“In rural India, people die due to snake bites, scorpion stings, bee stings, consuming poisons and pesticides without being able to reach ‘appropriate’ medical help,” director of public health P. Padmanabhan said.
“These special poison management centres will be linked to the district health centre and will function in every block of a district. The district hospitals are linked to major hospitals in the state and can be quickly reached in emergency,” he added.
“This is an NRHM initiative,” said Padmanabhan, adding: “The Tamil Nadu government will train doctors and nurses and support staff in all the primary health centres (PHC) to treat poison cases.”
A World Health Organisation (WHO) report says snake bites alone cause around 50,000 deaths in India every year.
There is a standard protocol for treatment of snakebite and some standardised procedures are there for other poisoning cases too. “The poison management centres will follow this strictly and uniformly,” the official said.
As the poison management centres would be linked to main district health platforms, the patients would be treated immediately. “The speed with which intervention is made available can save lives,” the official pointed out.