Tamil Nadu has excelled in the medical education field and has a far better doctor-patient ratio when compared with the rest of the country. However, there was still room for improvement, said Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan here on Friday.
He was speaking at the annual International Public Health Conference ‘DPHICON 2023’ on the topic ‘Financing Primary Health Care / How to use technology effectively in Primary Health Care’.
He said that social justice and equitable access to education had helped the State progress.
After education, Tamil Nadu spent more on health. It had a good primary health network. However, there was still room for improvement. During COVID-19 pandemic, we discovered that we had certain resilience and ability to leverage the existing resources.
In Madurai, there was overcrowding in the Government Rajaji Hospital and it had become an epicentre, he said.
With the help of the local self-help groups of about 4,000 women, particularly in villages, the volunteers went door-to-door to check for symptoms in people.
Five bed to 10 bed facilities were set up in panchayat levels with oxygen, medication and nurses. It greatly reduced the number of people coming to the GRH. Test was taking a long time as the samples were getting batched. We had enough centres but few test machines. We increased the number of test machines through CSR funding, he said.
As much as public health was about administration, organisation and efficiency, it was about quality medical care, quality of doctors and medication, he said.
He also stressed the need for a standard design for tertiary care centres, need for the maps, signages, search systems and patients’ information system without violating the privacy norms so that patient records could be accessed. Good hospital administration and healthcare system administration must be ensured, he said.
From the financing and health perspective, the first thing to do was greatly improve the technology and funding healthcare. We must improve the efficiency with which we spend money, the information available to help us make decisions to allocate resources and make it easier for people to access the resources that the State provides, he said.
Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine T. S. Selvavinayagam was present.
