Growing cases of doctor-patient violence in the country at the back of his mind, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday talked at length about the “gaps” that remained between a good healthcare system and the population of the country and noted that in view of the shortage of doctors, the workload on the existing ones was “very high.”
Referring to the pressures on the doctor, he said, “I would say unrealistically high.” The situation needed to be addressed very urgently, he maintained while addressing the 45th convocation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here.
Kovind’s observation comes days after the Resident Doctors’ Association (RDA) of the AIIMS had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “live” their life for a day to understand their stress in view of poor infrastructure, degrading healthcare system and misbehaviour of patient’s kin during emergency situations.
Apparently empathising with their issues, the President said, “I recognise that I am placing a big responsibility on the capable shoulders of our doctors. I acknowledge that our doctors need help. They need help in the form of more colleagues and this is where we need a new regulatory system to enhance the availability of doctors and medical professionals in our society.”
Pointing that the medical colleges, run by the Government or private entities, had about 67,000 undergraduate seats and 31,000 post-graduate seats currently, he said, “In a country of 1.3 billion people, this is highly inadequate.”
The country had to overcome the “regulatory bottlenecks” and “interest groups” that had prevented the growth of a quality medical education, Kovind added.
“This gives us far fewer medical graduates and post- graduates every year than our people need. It also leads to aspiring medical students seeking admission in colleges in other countries, simply because they have limited options at home,” he said adding such a situation was “simply not acceptable”.
“We need to address this situation very urgently. We need to create more opportunities for those young people who want to make medicine their calling,” the president said as he lauded the students and faculty of the premier medical institute, saying that the AIIMS had become “a byword for quality, commitment and a rich experience”.
Aware of the growing commercializion and in view of reports of unethical practices being adopted in the health sector, particularly private sector, Kovind also underlined that it is for society to profit from medical science - it is not for medical science to profiteer from society.