Speaking after formally launching the Telemedicine facility for the rural areas at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here, he said the country with 17000 hospitals and half a million doctors has the potential to give its people the best health care facilities.
Lauding the efforts of the technologists from ISRO, doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and administrators from both Central and State Governments who made it possible to take good health care to the doorstep of the poor in some rural areas, Sibal assured all assistance from his Ministry in terms of installation of hardware to reach out to the rural areas.
Later, in a teleconference with Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Rajasthan Health Minister Digambar Singh, who were present at the Medical Kiosks in Gohana and Kaithun respectively, Sibal congratulated the State Governments for taking forward the initiative for the benefit of the rural masses.
A project entitled 'Village Resource Centre,' which aims at providing specialized (tertiary level) health services at the Community Health Centre (CHC) level, was funded to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) in March 2006. Three such centres have been set up in the first phase in Gohana (Haryana), Kaithun (Rajasthan) and Dasmal (Himachal Pradesh).
The centres at Gohana and Kaithun are now working in full swing. Each centre provides some modern diagnostic facilities to people coming from rural areas and they are also attended by a qualified doctor. In addition, through a satellite link, each centre is connected to SGRH, New Delhi for providing online consultation and medical diagnosis.
In case further consultation is needed, patients are referred to SGRH where they do not have to pay any consultation fee to specialist at SGRH. Initially, the proposal from SGRH was for setting up 16 such centres. It was, however, decided to do a pilot at three centres and then consider setting up more centres.
The project is a good example of public-private partnership in which the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, ISRO, DST and SGRH are active partners. The total cost of each centre is about Rs.57 lakhs.
SGRH is expected to provide health-care through telemedicine services to about 50,000 patients every year and direct medical services to about three to five lakhs poor villagers at these centres.
Quelle/Source: DailyIndia, 26.08.2007
