Government Listens

Bikash Choudhury

Gulam Nabi Azad, the union health minister announced about Short-term medical course at district level in Govt. run schools to reach out to rural population across the country, on 16th Jan 2010 at Nagpur. The main objective is to staff the primary health centers and other rural based hospitals with rural based health professionals from the short-term course; which is one of the biggest challenges encountered by health administrators-Hospitals without Doctors in Rural areas. Further, this step would bring improvement in the ratio of doctors to population which currently stands at 576 per million populations. If the announcement is actually followed up with action then Health Minister and UPA Government would go down in the annals of history as a Govt. that has altered the life of rural masses very significantly. Apart from that, this scheme if successfully executed across the country has the potential of increasing the country’s GDP by 1-2% on its own. It is personally amazing for me because within five months of writing to Govt. on the subject, announcement of decision of short-term medical course came through. I do not wish to claim that the decision of short-term medical course announcement was based on our suggestion alone but just in case we assume that decision was based on the input given by ordinary people then we must concede now that popular Governments actually listen to people if approached to the decision making eco-system of Govt. on a valid proposal and other thing is Govt. can choose to be efficient. This author had actually written a letter to union health minister, medical council of India and health secretary of State & union territory Governments to consider introducing a diploma level medical course for rural areas. Our hypothesis was if we approach the entire ecosystem of health sector then our ideas would be evaluated appropriately and may be Govt. and medical council in this case would act with alacrity. Our hypothesis has been vindicated and therefore wishes to appeal to all media professionals and thinkers having Ideas that could impact the lives of ordinary people must have the courage to approach the Government with their ideas to respective eco-system in Govt. A carpet bombing of new ideas would help make this country prosperous and peaceful at the same time.
There is a tail piece to this story. During July 2009 this author was invited by a close relative to negotiate with the management of a private medical college to reduce the capitation fees for his son. However, this author was brow beaten by the young director of the medical college with arguments like the cost of capital for setting up of a medical college and still higher cost of running a medical college in current times when technology obsolence adds to the cost further. While entirely agreeing with the contention, this author dropped out from further negotiation on the subject. However, Idea struck-private medical colleges alone are no solution to the challenges faced by health sector in the country; as you can not expect a student of private medical college working in rural areas after spending a family fortune in his medical education. Therefore, a diploma level MBBS course(Short-term medical course) is the way forward.