India was yet to fulfil its constitutional obligation of making healthcare facilities available within the reach of every individual in the country, said S. Nagamuthu, Judge of Madras High Court, while speaking at the inauguration of ‘EMCON2016,’ the 18th annual conference of Society for Emergency Medicine India (SEMI), here on Friday.
Citing fundamental rights and provisions of Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution of India, which directs the government to take adequate measures to improve public health, Mr. Nagamuthu said neither the union government nor any of the State government had accomplished the obligation. He also cited a Supreme Court judgement of 1966, which detailed the action to be taken by the governments to improve health care.
“However, there is still a long way to go. For instance, I recently witnessed a case where an elderly man was asked to wait for a month at a government hospital for dialysis, which he could not afford at a private hospital,” he said.
Urging doctors not to hesitate in treating patients of medico-legal cases, he also appealed to the doctors to invest at least 30 per cent of their time in treating the poorer section of the society free of cost.
Speaking at the function, industrialist Karumuttu T. Kannan, highlighted the growth of healthcare facilities in the past two decades in Madurai, which he said had found a place in the healthcare map of South-East Asia.
Bipin Batra, Executive Director of National Board of Examination, spoke about the progress being made in providing formal education in the speciality of Emergency Medicine.
Prathap C. Reddy, Chairman of Apollo Hospitals, was awarded ‘Icon of Emergency Medicine’ at the function for his pioneering contributions in the field. It was received on his behalf by Rohini Sridhar, Chief Operating Officer of Apollo Hospitals (Madurai Division) and a team of doctors from Apollo Speciality Hospitals.
Videographed messages of Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, and Mr. Prathap Reddy, expressing their support and appreciation for the conference, were played.
S. Gurushankar, Chairman of Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre (MMHRC), Goutham Bodiwala, past president of International Federation for Emergency Medicine, T.S. Srinath Kumar, president of SEMI, Kevin Reynard, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in the United Kingdom, and Narendra Nath Jena, Head of Department of Emergency Medicine at MMHRC, also spoke at the function.
