Asserting that India has taken a lead in the production of vaccines for the prevention of malignancies like Cervavac, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said affordable and accessible healthcare is the road map for a ‘healthy India’. He said India has moved from a sectoral and segmented approach to health service delivery to a comprehensive need-based healthcare service and is now seen as a role model in crisis management and preventive healthcare.
The minister of state in the Prime Minister’s office was speaking at the launch of Jammu and Kashmir’s first-ever state-of-the-art cancer care facility affiliated to Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai in the new block of Government Medical College Kathua.
‘India has taken a lead in the production of vaccines for the prevention of malignancies like cervavac – the country’s first quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine to fight cervical cancer. The Biotechnology sector is growing by leaps and bounds as India is set to achieve USD 150 billion Bio-economy by 2025, which stood at over USD 100 billion in 2022,’ he said.
‘Affordable and accessible healthcare is the roadmap for ‘Healthy India’ under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which is evident from the fact that more than 260 new medical colleges have been established in the country with a 79 per cent increase in MBBS seats and 93 per cent in PG seats in nine years besides approving of 22 AIIMS,’ he said.
Singh thanked Modi for bringing ‘Preventive Health Care’ into focus in the country for the first time which is the reason that in just a span of two years, India could produce two DNA vaccines and one nasal vaccine.
Referring to the launch of the cancer care facility in Kathua, the minister said he felt pained to receive calls every day from different parts of the region from desperate family members pleading to arrange admission of cancer patients at Tata Hospital Mumbai or arrange accommodation for the attendants.
Singh said he then decided to start the facility at Kathua and moved the papers to the Department of Atomic Energy which is the controlling authority of Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.
‘With increasing lifespan, changing lifestyles and environmental factors, the prevalence of cancer is assuming epidemic proportions and cancers of all nature and all organs are happening everywhere. A Tata satellite cancer care facility in Kathua will therefore prove to be a great boon for the region,’ he said.
Under the leadership of Modi, he said, satellite hospitals and the facility of Tata Memorial Centre have been started in different parts of the country and in Guwahati, even Onco DM and MCh super speciality courses have been started, which could be contemplated for Kathua as well.
He added that his Kathua-Udhampur-Doda Parliamentary constituency could be the future ‘Health Circuit’ of India with state-of-the-art healthcare facilities like three medical colleges and north India’s first biotech park.
