The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : National health programmes on the anvil

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 27, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

National health programmes on the anvil

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, MARCH 26. Two new national programmes — one on diabetes and cardio vascular diseases and the other on speech therapy — will be launched by the Centre soon, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, A. Ramadoss, announced here today.

Speaking after inaugurating Apollo Gleneagles PET-CT Centre, he also disclosed that the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, would launch the National Rural Health Mission aimed at providing improve health care to the rural people next month. This is South Asia's first Positron Emission Tomography (PET) CT scanning, an imaging technique that evaluates the metabolic activity of cells.

The Union Minister said that India had become the `capital' of diabetes and cardio vascular diseases. He called for more private-private public partnership in the health care sector. There was urgent need for expansion of health services to the rural areas and sought the support of the private institutions in this endeavour. He said the high cost of treatment was one cause of indebtedness among the rural people.

Health tourism

Health tourism was picking up in a big way as the health facilities had improved drastically. Foreigners were looking towards India for its advanced health facilities and already it had now become hub of health care activity, he added.

The Chief Minister, Rajasekhara Reddy, who opened the Cyclotron facility at the hospital, said his Government had enabled treatment of 6,000 children identified with heart ailment. Already 1,500 children had undergone surgeries and the remaining would be covered by March next. He felt that Visakhapatnam could emerge as a leisure destination in terms of health tourism.

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