HYDERABAD: Emphasising the need to make rural healthcare more robust, Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu stressed on the importance of telehealth and other such initiatives. He was speaking after virtually inaugurating the Global Healthcare Summit-2022 organised by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI).
“It is worrisome that rural areas are lagging behind with limited access to primary healthcare. To bridge this gap, solutions must be explored in telehealth to reach remote areas,” he said adding that Indian-origin American doctors could focus more on the same. AAPI president Dr. Anupama Gotimukul mentioned similar thoughts and said that the association had adopted 75 villages in Telangana, AP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and were holding preventive diagnostic tests to prevent diseases to kidney and heart, and conditions such as anaemia, diabetes and stroke.
“One of our key goals is to act as a pressure group to bring in a policy in all States wherein every individual above the age of 50 undertakes the mandatory diagnostic checks like mammogram, creatinine levels, complete blood picture, colonoscopy, diabetes etc to ensure non-communicable disease are treated early on,” said Dr. Anupama Gotimukul.
The Chief Guest of the day, Dr. D Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman of AIG Hospitals, also echoed similar thoughts emphasising that AAPI must play a crucial role in bringing reforms to medical education. “In the west, we are seeing more emphasis on emergency medicine and palliative care in the medical education stage itself. In India also this kind of reform is needed in medical education,” said Dr. Reddy.
The Vice President also sent out a message to the people of the nation stating that they must learn from the lessons of previous waves and act in caution. “Always follow the dharma of Covid-19 protocols and remember the lessons we learnt during previous waves of the pandemic. It is not only dharma but also our “kartavya’’ to follow Covid-19 protocols,” he said. He also congratulated Telangana for its performance in the recent NITI Aayog Health Index.