Srinagar, Jul 29 (IANS): Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta on Saturday asked the health professionals to screen the whole population of the UT for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) like Hypertension, Diabetes and common types of cancers.

Chief Secretary said that the NCD are major cause of deaths across the globe so their early diagnosis could lead to better prevention and cure of such diseases.

He asked for organising camps all across J&K for conducting free of cost screening of people.

CS said that there is still scope for improvement in institutional births despite it being ahead of national average.

He also emphasised on further improving the ranking of the UT in SDG goals related to health.

He asked the department to digitise all the health records of the patients so that it is accessible to them anywhere by using their ABHA numbers and advised them to allow them to add their previous records to it for saving the same for posterity.

He also enquired from the officers about the defunct machinery and poorly managed infrastructure in the hospitals of the UT.

He said that the department should make a plan to repair all of such machines and upgrading the infrastructure to put it to optimal use for the benefit of general public.