To address the urban-rural divide in healthcare, Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu suggested that whichever corporate hospital started a unit in places such as Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli, should also start at least one in a district headquarters.
Hospital inaugurated
“This should be the aim for the private sector. That is the way forward to tackle this urban-rural divide,” he said, shortly after inaugurating GEM Hospital on Monday. He observed that the focus of the corporate sector was mostly confined to urban areas and the time had come to expand their facilities to rural areas.
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“Public-private partnership could be the model to bridge the gap by providing technically advanced primary and secondary healthcare centres that act as the first response units to combat diseases or general ill health,” he said.
Challenges remain
India has made significant strides in improving the health outcomes of the people with the availability of modern methods of treatment and better healthcare facilities, he said, adding: “However, one of the biggest challenges in building a comprehensive healthcare system is the existence of huge disparity between urban and rural areas,” he said.
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Some of the challenges included low public spend, low doctor-patient ratio, low-patient-bed ratio, rising out-of-pocket expenditure, dearth of medical colleges and trained doctors, inadequate infrastructure in rural areas, lack of penetration of health insurance and inadequate disease surveillance, he added.
“The Government of India has decided that we must have one medical college in every district across the country,” he said. He pointed out that the Centre has set the target of increasing health expenditure to 2.5% of GDP by 2025. to fulfil the healthcare needs.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said Tamil Nadu was leading in several health indicators in the country. “Under the Japan International Cooperation Agency-funded Tamil Nadu Urban Healthcare Project that would be implemented at a cost of ₹1,634 crore, 11 government hospitals and district-level hospitals will be upgraded,” he said.
O. Panneerselvam, Deputy Chief Minister, said Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme was a model for the Centre’s ‘Ayushman Bharat’scheme of the Government of India.
D. Jayakumar, Fisheries Minister, M.R. Vijayabaskar, Transport Minister, C. Palanivelu, chairman, GEM Hospital, and S. Ashokan, chief executive officer, GEM Hospital, were present.