09 Mar,2014

Seminar at New Delhi 9th March 2014

The Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD) has demanded from the political parties to define their health agenda in the upcoming elections to the Parliament. It is an irony that most of the political parties completely ignore health in their manifestos. This demand is an outcome of the seminar on “Building Future through Peace, Health and Development” organized by the IDPD on 9th March 2014 at New Delhi. A letter in this regard will be soon sent to the central leaders of political parties said Dr Arun Mitra – General Secretary IDPD. A draft of the IDPD health charter was presented by Dr Usha Shrivastava – Secretary IDPD which was discussed in details by the participants. This draft will be discussed in different parts of the country before giving it a final shape which would be later on submitted to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare after the elections. Giving a detailed presentation on “Challenges of Health Care in India” Dr Prachin Ghodajkar - Assistant Professor at Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health in JNU, New Delhi said that the health care delivery system has been very systematically and subtly shifted from the state’s responsibility to provide healthcare as a constitutional obligation to make it techno centric purchasable commodity in consonance with the neo liberal economic order. This has resulted in increasing number of population getting devoid of quality health care. To meet the challenge of health in our country public health spending has to be increased to a minimum of 6% of our budget. There has to be a rational drug policy to control the prices of the drugs, he said. Mr.Manish Dabhade – Assistant Professor International School of disarmament studies JNU cautioned that arms race is impinges on the budget for the development. Certain issues pending for long between India & Pakistan, India & China and now with Bangladesh & Sri Lanka have pushed the region into increased spending on arms. Professor K N Kabra a leading economist said that the economic policies being pursued by the successive governments for the last nearly two decades have created a false notion of growth and increase in the GDP. There has been in fact exclusion of vast majority of the population from the benefits of economic development. Points raised in all these deliberations were debated at length by the participants. Prominent among those who participated in the discussion include Maj. Gen. Retd. Vinod Saighal, Ms.Amarjeet Kaur, Dr Anil Pathak, Dr Anjali Mehta, Dr Manju Sharma, Prof. Gargi Chakravorti, Dr Chetna Hans, Dr Arashdeep Singh, Dr Koninika Ray. Doctors and medical students from Ghaziabad - U.P, AIIMS & Maulana Azad Medical College – Delhi, Adesh Institute of Medical Sciences – Punjab, GMC & ASCOMS – Jammu participated. Dr Nilima Pathak thanked all the participants and said that they will soon organize interactive sessions in different institutions and part of the National Capital Region Delhi.