Kathmandu, November 27:

A two-member government team is participating in a three-day international seminar aimed at working out modalities for expansion of the Integrated Management on Childhood Illness (IMCI) programme throughout the country, in Mumbai from tomorrow. The workshop is expected to discuss on accelerating IMCI pre-service training in medical colleges for better coverage of the programme.

Dr Sun Lal Thapa, programme officer at IMCI said that Nepal has already included IMCI programme in the medical curriculum that it would be better if a pre-service training could be provided. Dr Thapa and Indra Prasad Yadav, from the Dhanusha District Public Health Officer are participating in the workshop. “The programme takes lots of time to scale up because of long duration and budgetary constraints hence these types of workshops would help expand the IMCI programme,” said Dr Thapa.

“The most cost effective way to disseminate knowledge and expertise on Integrated Management on Childhood Illness is to train the medical students as it would provide blank coverage in a very short time and the country will benefit as the professionals from medical colleges will join the government services eventually,” he said.