Need to minimise rural-urban divide in healthcare: Shekhawat

Chandigarh, Mar 18 (UNI) Urging the doctors to be good human beings, Vice President Bhairon Sign Shekhawat today said there was a need to minimise the rural-urban divide in the country's healthcare system.

''It is important to provide an affordable basic health care system to all our citizens including 26 per cent of the population living below the poverty line,'' the Vice President said in his address at the 27th Convocation of the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) here.

He said the problem of rural-urban divide was getting further aggravated due to rising cost of medicines, as also beyond-the-reach cost of treatment for the general public in private hospitals.

The government hospitals, with all their limitations, were in reality the only available recourse to the common man, he pointed out.

''Wherever you go, I would urge you to be a good human being, and it is the humane qualities of care, compassion and understanding that make the class of doctors noble and dignified,'' Mr Shekhawat said.

Urging the doctors to have ''Antodyaya Drishti'', that is, focusing one's attention first on the last man in the queue, he said that only this kind of approach would enable us to build a new social order of all inclusive development with equity.

Mr Shekhawat urged the medical faculty of the PGIMER to focus their research not only on the frontier areas of technology, but also on the ground realities where diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and diarrhoea widely inflicted the common man particularly in the remote and underdeveloped areas.

He said the institutions like the PGIMER and AIIMS in Delhi had given India a unique international recognition in the field of medical education and health care. ''It is on account of this international recognition through these institutions that India is now emerging as a preferred medical tourism destination,'' he said.

Prior to the PGIMER Convocation, Mr Shekhawat inaugurated the Advanced Eye Centre in the PGIMER in the presence of Union Health and Family Welfare minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss.

This eye institute offers advanced diagnostic and therapeutic care for all sub-specialties in opthamology.

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