Medicon-25: Omar for strengthening healthcare in rural areas
Chief minister Omar Abdullah, on Friday, strongly emphasised upon strengthening healthcare sector in the rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The CM said that to ensure healthcare in rural areas, young doctors have to contribute their bit because they have lesser responsibilities compared to senior doctors.
Chief minister Omar Abdullah, on Friday, strongly emphasised upon strengthening healthcare sector in the rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing “Medicon-25”, a medical conference held here, Omar said, “We have to try and ensure that our doctors simply don’t practice in cities. I know this is not a popular thing for me to say here but at the end of the day rural areas do deserve some amount of healthcare and medicines.”
The CM said that to ensure healthcare in rural areas, young doctors have to contribute their bit because they have lesser responsibilities compared to senior doctors.
Omar candidly stated that the healthcare in peripheral areas were not up to the standards.
“Dr Ashutosh Gupta (principal GMC Jammu) pointed out that GMC Jammu has become a referral hospital and has been over-stretched. I know this but we have now GMCs in other districts where we have to go for capacity building and enhance the existing facilities to lessen burden on GMC Jammu and similarly in Srinagar,” he said.
“Our challenge is to make healthcare more easily accessible… Our peripheral areas’ health care is not up to the requisite standards and that is why everyone floods into cities,” he added.
“There was a time when we only had GMC Jammu and GMC Srinagar. Now, we have GMCs at the district level. We have to augment and improve the emergency handling capability and capacity at those GMCs, he further stated.
The CM also said that his government has been constantly striving to provide more funds and facilities to the doctors.
“We will take a look at it and make some way forward. Better medical facilities will be introduced, and I promise that opportunities will also be better used,” he added
However, Omar said that despite plagued by various constraints, doctors do God’s job and that’s why considered next to God.
“You give hope to the most vulnerable patients and their attendants. You are there in every situation. You celebrate their joy when they recover, and you are there in difficult situations too when patients die and at times are at the receiving end. It is never an easy job. However, all your life, you are learning about new technologies, new ideas and new innovations,” he said.