The Hindu : New Delhi News : `Give priority to health care'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 18, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Give priority to health care'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, DEC. 17. The Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Justice A.S. Anand, today called upon the Centre to adopt a rights-based approach to strengthen the public health infrastructure in the country and take steps to ensure that everyone had the right to health care.

Chairing a national public hearing on right to health care jointly organised by NHRC and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Justice Anand expressed regret that even while Indian doctors have to their credit remarkable achievements as faculty teachers and practitioners in some of the most advanced countries and the country has helped set up hospitals and health care in other developing nations, the healthcare facilities available for the people of the country is inadequate.

"We find the most appalling health care facilities existing for our own countrymen. This is a common lament citizens of this country share. There is something fundamentally wrong with our national priorities. It is a national shame that if at all a patient can get to a hospital, he either succumbs to the disease even before he has had the most perfunctory attention or there is a trading of charge when there is death in a ward''.

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