The company sponsored a half-day programme held in Mumbai at the Bombay Hospital, in which 1,000 nurses participated. BD made an exclusive corporate presentation and disseminated product information to the nurses at the function. Similar programmes were organised by BD in other cities including Chandigarh, Calcutta and Trichur.

According to Chandra D Sharma, managing director, BD, while the company has been concentrating on diabetes, it is now diversifying into training nurses in other fields too-like on AIDS awareness, use of syringes, blood transfusion, and handling cancer patients.

``So far the emphasis was on diabetic training because the number of diabetics in the country is on the higher side,'' says Sharma.

During the training, the nurses are given an update on insulin injection techniques and provided with literature on how to handle the patients, and oral care, too. ``Since a nurse can be a via media, we make sure that she is updated on all the latest technologies, medicines and the side effects involved,'' points out Sharma.

He adds, ``It is not as if the nurses are not aware of these; it is just that new techniques keep coming up regularly and through these training programmes, where the nurses don't have to pay up anything, we try to impart the latest information to them. And this works!''

He adds further, ``We try to tie up with hospitals and various other companies who are into patient care and medicines and different associations for organising these workshops. And each workshop can last from two hours to two days and usually they are held over the weekend.''

Today BD has twelve trained nurses on its pay rolls, who go around the country organising workshops.