Noted doctor urges Karnataka CM to provide free healthcare

Noted doctor urges Karnataka CM to provide free healthcare

Healthcare should be free and be made a fundamental right, a city-based cardiac surgeon said.

Dr Devi Shetty,chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals, appealed to chief minister Jagadish Shettar to make this idea come true.

He was speaking during the inauguration of Healthex International 2012 on Friday.

“If healthcare is available for free and as a fundamental right, a lot of problems in the country will be solved,” he said. The two-day convention-cum-exhibition will feature talks by top doctors on the progress made in the field of medicine.

While the state government or the Centre is yet to provide citizens with free healthcare, Shettar said his government had provided thousands of Bangaloreans with optimum health care.

Karnataka is slowly becoming a health destination. But more than that, the needy are getting treated. This fiscal, `40 crores has been spent so far from the chief minister’s medical treatment fund, he said.

Apart from that, Rs4 crore has been spent on the treatment for people who come below the poverty line (BPL). About 3,300 needy patients received free heart surgeries.

The state has not seen a single registered case of polio in the past five years, he said.

Aravind Limbavali, minister for health and family welfare, said doctors should come together at such conferences to understand and tackle future healthcare issues.

“One of the challenges we are going to face is treating an increasing population of the elderly in the country. Currently, programmes such as Vajpayee Agroshree and Yashaswini Scheme, a scheme that provides health care for rural farmers, are doing well in the state,” he said.

But it is imperative that doctors should fulfil their requirement of spending one year treating the rural poor in the country, he added.