The Hindu : National : "Charitable agencies can help"

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Sunday, Jun 05, 2005

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National

"Charitable agencies can help"

Special Correspondent

MUMBAI: While the involvement of the private sector in healthcare was "inevitable and desirable," the public sector "must remain an integral part of the healthcare sector in India," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Saturday.

He was inaugurating the 259-bed multi-speciality Saifee Hospital here built by the Dawoodi Bohra community. The occasion also marked the 94th birthday of the spiritual and temporal head of the one million-strong Dawoodi Bohra community, Dr. Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, who was present.

Addressing an audience which included the Governors of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, Union Ministers Arjun Singh and P. M. Sayeed and Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Dr. Singh said that healthcare should not be restricted to a privileged few.

"Premier tertiary-level healthcare institutions must be role models for medical institutions at [the] other levels."India's experience, he said, showed that neither government nor private institutions had succeeded in meeting the country's healthcare needs. Here charitable institutions could help "bridge the health care gap so visible in our country."

"Today, our country stands at a peculiar crossroads," said Dr. Singh. Not only was it burdened by "diseases of the past" such as malaria and TB but it also faced "lifestyle ailments like diabetes, hypertension and cancer." Ways had to be found to tackle both sets of maladies simultaneously.This was not an easy task when funds were limited and choices had to be made.

The new Saifee hospital replaces an older structure that was part of a sanatorium, one wing of which was used by the Polish Army as a hospital during World War II.

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