To make people aware about the benefits of good health, the Punjab Government is mulling to create a separate department for healthcare awareness.
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday asked the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences’ vice-chancellor to explore the feasibility of constituting such department so that people could be made aware about how to keep a good health through massive awareness campaigns. These campaigns must be launched at village level also so that people could be benefited from it, said Badal during his address said at the annual conference of Indian Medical Association.
Badal also announced that the State Government would annually bear the expenditure of five private practitioners, who are desirous of upgrading their expertise by undergoing training in the foreign lands. These doctors would be selected every year by a committee of officers of the State Government, representatives of IMA and Baba Farid University VC, Badal said.
“We are already sending doctors from the Government sector for such courses and now we have decided to extend this facility to the private practitioners also,” he added. Badal said that the setting up of the Homi Bhabha Cancer Treatment and Research Center at Mullanpur was a right step towards making Punjab a leading State in providing quality treatment to the cancer patients across the country.
He said that the State Government had also initiated a cashless treatment scheme for the cancer patients besides making efforts to provide subsidised medicines to them. He exhorted the doctors to serve the people far more zealously and sincerely by dedicating at least one day in a week for the service of poor and needy.
Badal also urged the leading private practitioners to adopt a cluster of villages around their hospitals to treat the people free of cost.