Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare launch National Emergency Life Support (NELS) courses for doctors, nurses and paramedics

Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar today launched National Emergency Life Support (NELS) courses for doctors, nurses and paramedics. Apart from the training modules, the program also includes developing training infrastructure in all States/UTs to implement the NELS course and creating a cadre of trainers to train doctors, nurses and paramedics working in emergency departments of the hospitals and ambulance services.

The Union Minister of State said that till now, health care professionals in the country had to rely on foreign modules and paid courses which were not only expensive but were also limited in scope to a handful of emergencies without considering needs and priorities of our population landscape. “Therefore, realizing the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s policy of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, the NELS provides standardized curriculum which is based on Indian context and developed in India”, she stated.

Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar highlighted that the Government is committed to continuous strengthening of delivery of Covid-19 and non-Covid essential health services, with the medium to a  long-term goal of enhancing preparedness capacities to manage medical emergencies and thus minimise  loss of precious lives. She stated that “Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi ji has always emphasized on providing affordable and best quality health services to the citizens. It is the need of the hour that India embarks on creating a world-class, efficient, professional and integrated system, enabled by technology, for the care of any victim of an accident, emergency or trauma in any part of the country.” Talking about the National Health Policy of 2017, she said that it envisaged the creation of a unified emergency response system, linked to a dedicated universal access number, with a network of emergency care, provision of life support ambulances and trauma management centres.

Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar further added, “To keep pace with technological advancement advancements, parallel efforts are needed for human resource development by equipping doctors, nurses and paramedics working in emergency departments of hospitals. The training should also be imparted to those providing pre-hospital care with standardized life-saving skills, to minimize mortality due to all types of medical emergencies in the country.”

MoS (HFW) requested the States to send f proposals for establishing NELS Skill Centres at their medical colleges and urged all Skill Centers to ensure that trainings are not only operationalized but also utilized to the maximum extent to improve the quality of emergency care services in the State. She also requested Disaster Management Cell to regularly interact with participating institutions and monitor their activities to make this a successful initiative.

The activities under the NELS entail developing emergency life support training modules for doctors, nurses and paramedics after experts’ consultations and based on the Indian context, setting up and equipping skill centres in medical colleges under Center/States to impart skill-based training on emergency life support for all categories of health functionaries, 120 skills centres to be established under SFC (FY: 2021-26) (out of which 90 skill centres are in various stage of development). This initiative will lead to creation of a pool of trained doctors, nurses and paramedics in the country with skills to provide standardized emergency life support and reduce mortality due to medical emergencies. This will contribute to overall disaster preparedness and response capacities in providing emergency clinical care. NELS course is comprehensive and deals with the management of medical emergencies, surgical emergencies, cardiac emergencies, respiratory emergencies including ventilator management protocol for COVID-19 and other disease, trauma-related emergencies, obstetric emergencies, paediatric emergencies, Snake bites, poisoning etc.

Shri Rajesh Bhushan, Union Health Secretary, Prof. Rajesh Malhotra, Head of Orthopedics & Chief, JPN Trauma Centre (AIIMS), Dr Atul Goel, DGHS and other senior officials from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were present in the meeting.