The government has increased the intake of Public Health Inspectors (PHI) fourfold, due to the dearth of PHIs reported last year, the Chairman of the Public Health Inspector’s Union, Upul Rohana told the Sunday Observer. At present there are 2,200 registered PHIs islandwide, of which 1,800 have been deployed in the field while the remainder are attached to agencies and institutions such as hospitals, airport, ports and universities.
“We have enrolled 400 students to be trained as PHIs this is a substantial increase given that we usually enroll only about 100 students per year. Extra students include previous examination candidates and who were not given appointments,” Rohana stated. The academic and training courses span over a two year duration which includes one and half years to complete the Diploma and another six months of field training.
According the Chairman of the union although the gazette called for 100 applicants to be short listed due to the need and scarcity of PHIs the Minister decided that we should increase the intake.
The main reason for the shortage to be highlighted was the need for more PHIs on the field for dengue prevention activities.
As per standards the a PHI is appointed for a population of 9000 however, this increased with the circumstances where the need to carry public inspections rose with the dengue outbreak.