NEW DELHI: Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Minister Jitendra Singh today called for establishing a ”Make in India” health module to meet the changing health needs of 21st century India.
Addressing the CII Health Conference organised by Confederation of Indian Industry here, he described the emergence of private sector as an inevitable phenomenon and stressed that for a heterogeneous country like India, public sector healthcare was still much relevant and therefore, a healthy synergism between public sector and private sector healthcare agencies was needed.
Speaking on the ”Make in India” health module, he said this module can be ”based on public-private partnership as well as multi-centric healthcare collaboration to meet the changing health needs of 21st century India.”
He cited from his experience in the Northeast where he had motivated some of the country’s leading corporate sector hospital groups to set up healthcare outlets of different magnitudes depending on the viability of the location, in the form of OPD clinics or diagnostic centres or even full fledged hospitals.
Referring to the constraints of heterogeneity and diversity, Dr Singh mentioned topographical and geographical variations in different regions of India. On the vast expanses of inaccessible areas in the North East where he had proposed the introduction of Helicopter Care Service in the form of Air Clinics wherein specialist doctor could fly to remote areas to hold the OPD and on way back, could also carry some needy patients requiring hospitalisation.
The same concept, he said, could also be applied to hill states like Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Averring that Indian society, as a whole, was fast evolving and at the same time, in recent years, India too had become a part of shrunken global world and this phenomenon was impacting every sphere of life including the healthcare system.
While on the one hand, disorders like diabetes and heart disease, which were hitherto confined to urban population, are now also on the rise in rural areas, on the other hand, the access to modern modalities of treatment is confined only to cities and big towns, as a result of which 70% of rural population gets access only to 1/3rd of country’s hospitalisation facilities and over 600 million people in the country are deprived of access to affordable healthcare, he added, an official release here said.
(AGENCIES)
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