Must bring effective healthcare to common man: Tharoor

KOLKATA - Union Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor Friday said the government should work towards bringing the effective healthcare system to the ‘aam aadmi’ (common man) as a vast majority of population lacks access to affordable medical services.

“We’ve to bring effective healthcare service to the aam aadmi. The vast majority of Indian men and women are still far away from the affordable healthcare facilities,” Tharoor told an interactive session organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) here.

Talking about the healthcare facilities, he said that most of the Indians still did not have a diagnostic clinic within 10 kilometres of their area.

“If we talk about healthcare in India, I think the mantra should be a good-clean and affordable healthcare mechanism.”

Tharoor said that the expenditure in health sector in India was not commensurate with the country’s GDP growth.

On the issue of having foreign direct investment in health care sector, he said that government is open to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in all sectors, including the healthcare.

Union Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi, who was also present at the interactive session, said: “The situation of healthcare is terrible, especially in the rural parts of India.

“We need to redefine the heath scenario and create more medical facilities like All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in other parts of the country as well.”

“About 80 percent of total investment in India’s healthcare sector comes from the private players and it caters to only 15 percent of the country’s total population,” Trivedi said.