2 days ago
Non-alcoholic liver disease gets Centre's scan guidelines
Panaji:
Health services will now follow the guidelines issued by the Centre for screening patients susceptible to Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). The guidelines which were issued last month, a health officer said, will help doctors examine more patients.
The officer said that 48,000 patients had been screened before the guidelines came into force.
'NAFLD was recently recognised as a major non-communicable disease and included under the National Programme for the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases,' the officer said. 'The programme began in Sep 2023, but the screening criteria guidelines were not prescribed by the Union health ministry.'
Operational guidelines emphasise screening criteria based on non-invasive risk scores, as stipulated by the Community Based Assessment Checklist.
This approach will help health workers segregate people from high-risk populations.
Individuals susceptible to NAFLD will undergo further investigations and treatment. Since there is no known cure for NAFLD, individuals are educated about maintaining their blood sugar levels and other healthy practices.
'Four medical professionals will be nominated from each state and sent for a one-day training session to Delhi,' the officer said. 'They will later train medical officers, auxiliary nurses, midwives, and chief health officers to make the optimum use of tools to identify the at-risk individuals.'
