Union Health Minister says that our country is also serving international community in promotion of medical support. He has elucidated the statement by saying that more than 81,000 and 75,000 Indian doctors are working in the US and UK respectively at present. All of them earned their medical degrees from Indian Medical Colleges. This is encouraging as well depressing; encouraging because our medical professionals have proved that they are equal to any other professional in the advanced world and can serve international community to the best of their ability. But it is also depressing because availability rate of doctors per ten thousand persons in India is among the lowest on world scale. In particular, our rural hospitals, dispensaries and medical units are abysmally short of qualified manpower. This imbalance has to be rectified.
But the very encouraging and significant part of Health Minister’s speech delivered on the occasion of presenting awards to 51 awardees for research activities in medical sciences is that the Government has focused on research and development in medical services on a wide and impressive scale. We have a vast medical services establishment in our country. In terms of medical institutions, colleges, professional manpower, technicians, laboratories etc. we have colossus of an establishment. Obviously, a country of our population needs services commensurate with the number of people requiring medical assistance. But one thing in which we have been deficit is health research and development. The Union Health Minister has very rightly laid emphasis on expanding and intensifying health research and development activities in their various dimensions. We need to depend less on researches made by others and develop an infrastructure that can deliver the goods. Of course, research has to be conducted in indigenous as well as in modern medicine and treatment of ailments and diseases.
Three main areas have been identified for research and development. These include setting up of multi-disciplinary research units in medical colleges, a network of virology laboratories in all Government Medical Colleges and national institutions and model rural health research units. This trilogy is of great relevance to overall development of health research in the country. The initiative has already been taken and the results obtained are encouraging. We appreciate the decision of the Union Health Ministry to take steps to enlarge the scope of research activities in more and more medical institutions and widen the scope of research. New methods of controlling viral diseases and destruction of viral sources like mosquitoes have to be developed. Research units in each Premier Medical College and Institution are expected to do commendable work in fighting the epidemics caused by calamities natural or man made. In a developing country like ours, it is but natural that health problems of variegated nature crop up from time to time. For example viral fever and dengue disease are of more recent origin and these are spreading fast. Research units are primarily intended to conduct research on such epidemics.
We highly appreciate the initiative taken by the Union Health Minister in this vital branch of medical research. The three components which he has identified would form most rational system of integrated research and development. The models set up have produced encouraging results. With the vision and initiative indicated by him, the country is on the path of big transition towards equitable distribution of R&D opportunities and greater success in resolving health issues. The day is not far off when our country will be on the map of countries with fairly advanced medical services in research and in delivery both.
Though the Minister has spoken about model rural health research units, and we highly appreciate that, yet it has to be told that our rural areas are still largely faced with shortage of adequate medical services. What has been said is essentially pertaining to research and development. But apart from that, we think that the Union Health Minister will need to conceptualize a comprehensive plan for tackling the health problems in rural India. It will be one of the major health development plans in the history of medical sciences if the entire rural India is brought under a vast, expansive and comprehensive medical plan that embraces all aspects of teaching, training, practical experimenting and conducting research in medical education. This is not a wishful thinking. A day will come when the issue will be hotly debated and resolved.
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