Bengaluru, Apr 3 (IANS): Karnataka government has launched 'Jagruti Karnataka', a Youtube channel to train grassroots level health workers in Covid-19 treatment, a top official said on Friday.

"In this time of crisis, it is practically impossible to send physical teams to tier II and tier III cities and beyond to train and mentor healthcare providers on how to tackle Covid," said Health and Family Welfare Department Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey explaining the rationale.

"The government has launched this channel as it is an effective and instant way of reaching out to the gram panchayat level", Pandey said.

Deploying Google owned Youtube technology, the health department aims to raise Covid awareness among health workers and also ensure adherence to the correct protocol in treating positive cases.

"The channel features videos on Covid management for capacity building on prevention, care, support and information dissemination. The channel currently has 10 videos in both English and Kannada and more videos will be uploaded in the coming days," said an official statement.

As of Friday, Jagruti Karnataka Youtube channel already has 1.5 lakh followers, including doctors, nurses, Asha workers, gram panchayat members and others.

The channel's videos disseminate information on physical distancing, proper quarantine procedures, contact tracing norms and others.

"Trainees can also get their queries answered with experts through this channel. For this, we conduct regular live interactive training sessions for gram panchayatAtask force members across the state," said the statement.

Other training videos include disaster management strategies, community prevention strategies, community surveillance, myths and facts, stigma and discrimination, personal safety and others.

The health department aims to train at least 100 task force teams, including medical professional who handle primary contacts and another 1,300 teams handling secondary contacts through the Youtube channel.