Union Minster Appeals Doctors to Adopt `Work on Holiday’ Package to Decrease Death Rate in Country

By Vasudha Bhat , Onlymyhealth editorial team

Sep 01, 2014

Healthcare Facilities In India In an attempt to supply better medical facilities in rural areas of the country, Union Minister Dr Harshvardhan yesterday urged the doctors and specialists to take up the `Work on Holiday’ package to treat the people in these areas.

While speaking at the Annual conference of the Society of Cardiac Anaesthesiology, Dr Vardhan appealed to the doctors to treat patients in the hilly areas, where the state governments were finding it difficult to provide secondary and tertiary healthcare.

Giving example of his recent Mussoorie trip, Dr Vardhan shared his experience of confronting lack of public health facilities in the area, which only has two small government hospitals with very few skilled doctors leading to avoidable deaths.

He said “the mismatch between the natural beauty of the region stretching from Dehradun to Jaunsaar-Bawar tribal belt, and, the ugly reality of people dying for want of even the basic primary care is a problem we must address with an out-of-the-box approach”.

The specialist doctors were insisted to visit the hilly areas as a guest of state governments and offer their services as cardiologists, gynaecologists, neurologists and anaesthetists while enjoying the facilities along with their families. Promising that the message would be soon sent to the state governments, Dr Vardhan asked the doctors to treat this as an extension of their services.

He said “even after 67 years of Independence, health for every Indian is still a distant dream. But, I believe if we can put our heart and soul to it, we can achieve it...And, therefore I appeal to all doctors, in every specialty to devote at least some time in small villages, where access to specialised medical services is not easy”.

He also appealed the doctors to look for ways to decrease the death rates in the country and to come up with new ideas to provide healthcare facilities to people.