PANAJI
The second edition of the annual Difficult Dialogues forum began on Friday with delegates and panelists discussing the topic of health in India and if it were a great challenge or not.
As a first for the discussion forum, a decision was also taken to associate with Goa University and The International Centre, Goa (ICG) for organising it for the next three years. It was inaugurated by Goa Governor Mridula Sinha and attended by personalities in the field of health including famous actor Kabir Bedi.
The event that will continue till February 12 will discuss a variety of issues related to the health sector, including insurance, mental health, cancer, curbing the spread of diseases and medical tourism in Goa.
At the inaugural session of the three-day event, questions were raised regarding the general outlook of healthcare in the country and what was being done to cater to those in the lower strata that didn’t have adequate access to even public health services, let alone the private ones.
Panelists were of the opinion that, not enough was being done by the central government to allocate funds in the budget towards health. Referring to a recent Lancet medical journal article, titled Accounting for the future of health in India, the country would continue to spend less on the health of its population per capita and percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) than most countries in the world.
Pointing to this, Dr Sridhar Venkatapuram, senior lecturer at King’s College, London said the budget itself had no specific section for health.
Professor Monica Lakhanpaul who holds a position with a young people’s programme in London and who is also a doctor pointed to how as a doctor, one was forced to stick to only treating patients but added that now, it was important to bring other sectors together to help create a bottom-up solution to health issues.
“India is changing considerably as compared to the past. Today, the cases of non communicable diseases like obesity and diabetes is on the rise. It’s a ticking time bomb. But at the same time, the cases of children with poor nutrition and cases of stunted growth are also high,” said Lakhanpaul.
Professor Marie Lall, a Sout h Asia expert on issues including politics and education who has worked in implementing projects in related fields said their current projects included bringing together health, education and engineering in facing and dealing with challenges in rural India with a funding of Rs 5 crore.
Goa University Vice Chancelor Varun Sahani laid emphasis on the power of the younger generation in opinion shaping but were not strong enough to create policy changes.
“The youth definitely matter in the public space but in terms of public policy, they are mutually excluded. The younger generation, however, are good in terms of opinion shaping and are best in building new knowledge. In the last decade and a half, they have managed to show they are technologically advanced and can help in network building and breaking status quo,” he said.
