Shillong, Jan 12: Health and Family Welfare Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh on Friday inaugurated the Integrated Public Health Laboratory (IPHL) under PM-ABHIM at Pasteur Institute here.
Lyngdoh also dedicated the identified locations of Critical Care Block (CCB) and Integrated Public Health Laboratory (IPHL) to be built in the seven districts of the state under the PM-ABHIM (FY 2021-2026).
While speaking to reporters after the inauguration of the IPHL, the Minister said that the Centre had been very generous in assisting the state government to strengthen its health facilities centers.
According to her, in the last few months, the State was given a total of seven projects by the Government of India and these include two critical care blocks projects in Williamnagar which is a 50 bedded district hospital and another 50 bedded district hospital in Khliehriat.
“We are going to build a critical care block in these two district hospitals,” Lyngdoh informed.
She further stated that these two important interventions will go a long way in strengthening these two district hospitals, which are the secondary care centers for citizens of the state in these two districts.
Health and Family Welfare Minister said that they are also happy that the Centre has given infrastructure building to set up IPHLs in Pasteur Institute, Jowai, Mawkyrwat and Ampati.
‘Now these labs have been modeled by the government of India will ttempt to improve testing facilities for citizens both for the communicable as well as the non communicable diseases,” Lyngdoh said.
She observed that citizens are spending a lot of money at the time of testing for investigation of certain diseases.
According to her, these five laboratories which will be set up across the State will substantially reduce the out of pocket costs for investments in these testing facilities.
“With the state of the art technology and the surveillance nature of these of these labs will be able to predict if there is an outbreak of certain diseases. So this is very, very important for us. We seen outbreak of cholera, diarrhea and even COVID-19,” she said.
Health and Family Welfare Minister said that now an institute of this nature with the necessary manpower who are already specialists in their own fields will be able to preempt and address before an outbreak and to attend to the extent of damage that such diseases can cause to the population of the state.
She however sad that she is grateful to the Union Health Minister & Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya for attending the programme virtually and also expressed her gratefulness to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi who has been forthcoming in his assistance, not just to the state but to the entire north eastern regions.
It may be mentioned that the Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare had virtually laid the foundation stone of various healthcare infrastructure projects in Meghalaya and other states of the North East that included Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.