Karnataka   

Empathy between doctor and patient needed: Kamath

Manipal: Chairman of Prasar Bharati M.V. Kamath said on Saturday that every healer must posses a healing heart.

Speaking as the chief guest at the annual convocation of International Medical Sciences Academy (IMSA), here. The IMSA is an organisation of medical specialists of national and international repute.

Dr. Kamath said that more than medicine, it was empathy between doctor and patient that was relevant. What was important was the diagnosis. He was not saying it just to run down the doctors, but to emphasise the importance of diagnosing an illness. Over-investigation and over-interventions had become a bane of modern medicine. “A time may come in the not too distant future when the general practitioner is replaced by a robot with effortless ease and the technician replaces the general practitioner,” he said.

Dr Kamath said that according to the information available, gene therapy has the potential to treat lethal and disabling diseases as well as disease prevention. “The rationale of gene therapy lies in our understanding the genetic basis of human disease,” he said.

Jagadishan, president of IMSA, conferred honorary fellowships of IMSA on eight persons. Persons who received the fellowship are: Justice K. Narayana Kurup, C. Jyothi, Dinesh Kumar Bhugra, B. Bhaskar Rao, Rajaratnam, Frank Kean from Ireland, Irving Taylor from United Kingdom, and Tahir Ali Javed from Pakistan.

General secretary of IMSA H.K. Chopra welcomed the gathering.

Vice president of IMSA R.R. Thukral proposed a vote of thanks.

Vice Chancellor of Manipal University Rajasekharan Warrier, Trustees of the IMSA, Shahina Asif, K.B. Sharma, Sandeep Mukherjee, and H. Luthra, were present during the programme.

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