ECHO India Strengthens the Public Healthcare System in India by Capacity Building of over 2 00 000 Healthcare Professionals in the Battle Against the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The collaboration enables premier government healthcare institutions to virtually train doctors, paramedics and other healthcare professionals to build capacities for prevention and control of coronavirus cases in the country

New Delhi, Delhi, India (NewsVoir)

ECHO India has partnered with premier government healthcare institutions in its efforts to strengthen the emergency response to COVID-19 with consistent capacity building programs for healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses, ASHA workers and paramedics. The Echo model worldwide harnesses its tele mentoring outreach to upskill healthcare professionals by conducting virtual training sessions with their partners.

To deal with the challenges posed by the outbreak, AIIMS, Delhi worked in conjunction with ECHO India to conduct a national session on ventilatory management of COVID-19 training over 5000 healthcare professionals. The virtual training session enabled doctors across the country to better manage COVID-19 patients suffering from respiratory issues. Along with its partners, ECHO India has reached out to over 10,000 doctors and Red Cross volunteers spread across the nation.

Dr. (Col) Kumud Rai, Chairman ECHO India, emphasized, “The COVID-19 pandemic needed quick response and along with our partners we have been able to get into action to grow our outreach to the Public Healthcare Professionals and system in India. Indian healthcare environment provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the adoption of the ECHO model. The need for specialty care in India, especially in rural settings, is substantial and growing. System-wide integration of Project ECHO offers a solution that can benefit the entire population.”

ECHO India partners including Piramal Swasthya, AIIMS Delhi, Hospital for Mental Health, Ahmedabad, NIMHANS Bangalore, SGPGI, Lucknow leveraged the ECHO platform to train more than 12000 healthcare professionals in March.

ECHO India is also supporting Central and State government bodies in managing the emergency response to COVID-19 pandemic. The Government of Delhi, National Health Mission of Punjab, State TB Office of Assam, and most notably, National Health Mission of Maharashtra are already leveraging ECHO platform to train healthcare professionals, admin staff and frontline workers. With the highest number of COVID-19 cases, NHM Maharashtra has harnessed the ECHO model to conduct over 100 virtual training sessions so far.

ECHO India’s tele mentoring platform allows the dissemination of knowledge and best practices through its virtual network of 31 active hubs running 49 programs across 20 different focus areas. The sessions are attended by doctors, technicians, primary healthcare workers and other medical staff spread across 55 cities in India.

As on date, the ECHO India platform has facilitated COVID-19 specific virtual trainings of close to 2 lac participants over 513 sessions.

About ECHO

Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) a worldwide organisation dramatically improves both capacity and access to specialty care for rural and underserved populations. This low-cost, high-impact intervention is accomplished by linking expert inter-disciplinary specialist teams with primary care clinicians through tele ECHO™ clinics, in which the experts mentor primary care clinicians to help them manage their patient cases and share their expertise via mentoring, guidance, feedback and didactic education. Project ECHO is committed to addressing the needs of the most vulnerable populations by equipping communities with the right knowledge, at the right time and at the right place.

As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, Project ECHO is providing a tele mentoring platform, playing an important role in how public health officials, scientists and healthcare workers in India and abroad share best practices and information. Project ECHO is a global movement of knowledge democratization with the aim of amplifying health care professional capacity to deliver equitable healthcare across the world. Today Project ECHO is implemented by nearly 400+ partners in 38 countries.

On the web: www.echoindia.in.

Image 1: AIIMS session with annotated map

Image 2: Tamil Nadu ECHO session

Image 3: Dr. (Col) Kumud Rai, Chairman ECHO India PWR
PWR

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)