In the wake of the Union government placing masks and hand sanitizers under the Essential Commodities Act (ESMA), the Karnataka State Drugs and Logistics Warehousing Society (KSDLWS) will take on the onus to procure and provide the thermal scanners to the Directorate of health and family welfare (DH&FW) of Bengaluru Urban, Kalaburagi, and Dharward districts.

This along with the surgical masks, N95 masks and hand sanitizers which are being available at great difficulty or at exorbitant prices, KSDLWS will distribute the same to the government, according to the Karnataka health and family welfare commissioner Pankaj Pandey.

The state government has also indicated that all the three district health officers of Bengaluru Urban, Kalaburagi, and Dharward districts will draw an action plan of screening at public offices and procure necessary equipment and supplies from the KSDLWS.

Even as India reports 104 cases of the total global count is 1,42,649 patients, Karnataka to date has 6 COVID-19 cases with one fatality from Kalaburagi.

Prioritising early detection and strengthening the surveillance, the government has indicated that urban staff nurses will be utilised for screening purposes and if not available they could be accessed from other primary health centres. Even trainee staff nurses from the government nursing schools can be utilised for this purpose. A short hands-on training for such staff will be provided by the department of health and family welfare. This will be conducted by an identified physician working under his control. The screening time is between 9 am to 6 pm. Each screening point will have two staff nurses and a reliever to work simultaneously.

In a communication to the all the health departments in the 30 districts, the state health commissioner  indicated that the move could offset the shortages if any, could be made good by utilising the pragmatic cost under the National Health Mission. The responsibility of the Bengaluru Urban, district health officer will be more because he will have to make arrangements for screening at all the six places identified in this connection. These include the Vidhana Soudha, High Courts in Bengaluru, Kalaburagi and Dharward. Vikasa Soudha, MS Building, Legislature Homes and City Civil Courts. The screening has been extended to these public offices using thermal scanner stationed at the door frames next to the metal detector at the locations. This is in addition to the government order to screen all international passengers carried out by the health department’s dedicated staff, thereby restricting the spread of the infection.

The procurement of thermal scanners and other supplies like masks and sanitizers will be completed on a war footing basis. In fact KSDLWS has a new module introduced which will help to track the vehicle carrying drugs and related products to their medical centre from their concerned warehouse in the state.