‘Need to reimagine healthcare system’

There is a need to rethink and reimagine the healthcare system in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic, Dr . Gagandeep Kang, professor of Microbiology at Christian Medical College, Vellore, said on Wednesday.

Delivering a lecture on ‘Reimagining the Indian Healthcare System’, on the occasion of the 47th Foundation Day of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, she said, “A lot has changed in the last six months; we have recognized that diagnostics is important and needs to be scaled to provide information on infectious diseases. We have begun to manufacture equipment, tools, consumables, kits that we have never done at scale before. We realized that global supply chains are easily disrupted and strategic planning for disasters requires an understanding of critical control points. And I hope that we have realized the tremendous economic impact of the pandemic and our attempts to control it, require us to rethink, reimagine India’s healthcare system”.

“At the moment, the world is in crisis, pinning hopes on a vaccine that will not restore us to 2019, no matter what we fervently desire. But in nine months, public health and science have shown us that we can move with speed, that we can implement measures of control, collaborate and come with new technologies for potential, if partial, solutions,” she said.

Replying to a question on whether there is any evidence to encourage mainstreaming of AYUSH, she said, “I think there are too many detractors of the traditional systems of medicines.

“What it requires actually is a collaboration and complementarity where we establish same quality system that we use of western medicine to the traditional systems of medicines. And test them rigorously for impact.”

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairman of Board of Governors of the Institute, said the pandemic turned everything upside down but also resulted in a few positive developments.

“Seventeen years ago with the help of ISRO, we launched telemedicine programmes across the country. I was treating patients from Tripura, Siliguri and sitting in my office. I treated 53,000 heart patients. Telemedicine was not acceptable then. The Medical Council changed the regulation to legalize telemedicine.”

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