Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu has stressed the need for gradually erasing the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ seeking to drive home the message that private participation in development was essential as the governments could not do everything on their own.
“The role of private sector in health care assumes specific significance because India is lagging behind many countries in public health as per the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s assessment. The government’s efforts alone will not be enough to bring about the desired change. It is imperative that both the public and private stakeholders should join hands to improve the situation,” he asserted.
Speaking after inaugurating a medical camp jointly organised by Swarna Bharat Trust (SBT), Sentini Hospital, Kamineni Hospitals and Vishnu Dental College at Atkur here on Sunday, Mr. Naidu said the hospital bed strength and doctor-patient ratio in India were far short of the global benchmarks, and that he was elated when Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu spoke about permitting the establishment of more medical colleges as more number of doctors were required to fill the gap.
He also told the Chief Minister to fulfil what all has been promised on the health care front and in delivering other welfare schemes.
Mr. Venkaiah Naidu stated that only 40% and 32% of the urban and rural populations respectively were availing of the services rendered by government hospitals. Accessibility to public health institutions should certainly go up and if India is to become a healthy nation, both the public and private hospitals have to work in tandem. He suggested that the doctors should educate the masses about the consequences of sedentary lifestyle, which was to be largely blamed for the enormous disease burden.
Pollution
There were external factors also, like the increasing pollution which posed a serious threat. Delhi alone, he figured out, has about one crore vehicles.
The Vice-President insisted that doctors should educate the people about good eating habits and physical exercise and took a jibe at the banks for being too liberal in giving loans to car buyers and for other luxuries that stoked laziness. Plush with funds post-demonetisation, banks might be jubilant about the credit offtake but they have to obviously think about the repaying capacity of the borrowers, Mr. Naidu added.
Ministers Kamineni Srinivas and Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, District Collector B. Lakshmi Kantham, Andhra Bank general manager G.S.V. Krishna Rao and others were present.
