PM Modi talks about the importance of preventative healthcare

By: Editorial Team | | Published: October 25, 2014 7:06 pm

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday laid emphasis on how preventive healthcare and lifestyle should be practised to stay healthy, during the inauguration of the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in south Mumbai. Also Read - Coronavirus vaccine could be ready for India in few weeks, says PM Modi

He praised the Reliance Foundation for rebuilding the Hurkisondas Nurrotumdas Hospital and said the hospital has undergone a transformation and is seeing a new beginning. Also Read - Ganesh Chaturthi 2020: 4 reasons an eco-friendly Ganesha is good for you

Reliance Foundation — the not-for-profit arm of Reliance Industries — took over the financially ailing tertiary-care Hurkisondas Nurrotumdas Hospital eight years ago. Construction began three years ago.

The hospital, in its 90th year, has been completely rebuilt by Reliance Foundation into a modern 19-storey tower with two heritage wings. The foundation is headed by Nita Ambani.

Speaking to a star-studded gathering, including Bollywood personalities, cricketers and industrialists, Modi also said that under the ‘Make in India’ campaign it is needed to build expensive medical equipment in India so that it becomes affordable.

He also spoke on the need to spread telemedicine to the farthest corners of the country to help the poor.

Modi said the availability of pure drinking water is one of the most important and basic ways to ensure good health, and also stressed on the need to impart the importance of washing hands to children.

Other healthcare issues which need to be tackled

Woeful rural healthcare

Mahatma Gandhi had a dream that India would be a land of self-sustaining villages. The true India is to be found not in its few cities, but in its seven hundred thousand villages. If the villages perish, India will perish too. The health scenario in rural India would ve caused him great pain. The basic problem in this case is the lack of resources human or otherwise. Initiatives like the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) or a compulsory Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC) course haven t made much headway.

Here are some of the stark facts about the lives of our rural brethren:

50% of all villagers have no access to healthcare providers.
37% are chronically starved
10% of all babies die before their first birthday
50% of all babies are likely to be permanently stunted due to lack of proper nutrition
33% people have no access to toilets, while 50% defecate in the open

Source: Indiafacts.in and India Development gateway

Women s and Children s Health

According to a poll by Thomson Reuters, India is the worst place for women among G20 nations. Female foeticide, unequal rights, dowry killings, poor maternal health and lack of sexual education are just some of the reasons for the same. Here are few stark realities about women in India:

12 million girls were aborted in the last three decades in India
Child marriage has a domino effect since this also leads to lowered education levels and lower levels of awareness
45% Indian women are married before they turn 18. This results in early pregnancies, higher morbidity and mortality rates.
A mother dies every ten minutes in India

The children s healthcare situation is equally bad. While some diseases have been controlled to a large extent others continue to wreak havoc.

Over 1.25 million children die annually in India.
48% of all children have stunted growth due to malnutrition.

Source: Lancet 2011 and Save the Children

Only 7% children in India receive the minimum acceptable diet set by the WHO. The other countries we share such a dubious honour with are sub-Saharan African countries and Pakistan.

Medical Education and Healthcare Human Resources

India has some top quality medical institutes which provide quality education and a huge number of medical professionals are added to the task-force every year. While that is indeed a huge number, most of them are based in urban centres resulting in deficit of healthcare services in rural and semi-urban India. Read more here.

With inputs from IANS

Image source: Getty Images

Published : October 25, 2014 7:06 pm

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