By IANS,
Chennai : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday called for a new initiative involving the private sector and the government in ensuring that healthcare services were optimally delivered across the country.
“We need to devise a new pattern of public-private partnership in healthcare delivery,” the prime minister said here, inaugurating the first Apollo Reach Hospital at Karim Nagar in Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh via the Internet.
“In India, the private sector has played a dominant role in healthcare delivery starting from alternate medical systems to hi-tech speciality hospitals,” he said, adding the nation needed to build upon that to write a new chapter in health care delivery.
Apollo Reach Hospital is a new initiative of the group, promoted by Pratap C. Reddy, to open hospitals in semi-urban and rural areas.
Declaring that the role of public sector in healthcare delivery cannot be wished away, the prime minister said, “We have an obligation to streamline the public health system.”
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who similarly inaugurated another such hospital at Karaikudi in the state said the Apollo group had set the benchmark in healthcare delivery in the country.
Reddy, who is the chairman of the group, said the two hospitals were part of the plans to launch 25 such initiatives at an outlay of Rs.10 billion.
“The hospitals will reach international-standard healthcare close to every India,” said Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who was also present on the occasion. He was thanked for the five-year tax holiday for hospitals in semi-urban and rural India.
“There is no substitute for a comprehensive public health system supported by the budget,” he said, while calling the Apollo group’s initiative “a bold venture”.
“But we must marry the public health system to private medicare,” he said, adding such a model was necessary to bring new means of finance, insurance, technology and modern information system, as also for the doctor-patient connect.
Speaking at the event, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the National Rural Health Mission was revolutionising rural healthcare delivery systems in India silently.
“The cost of treatment in India is the lowest in the world and the government would like to keep it that way,” he added.