I am writing a few thoughts wrt medical vision especially cardiac surgery future in India. This can be treated as part one.
We are currently heavily focussed on the treatment or curative part of medical sciences. I feel equal balance should be given to the preventive and research/innovation part of medical sciences also. Only such an approach will make our enormous population healthy or in other words only then will we be able to provide health for all. If we focus on creating only doctors and hospitals for providing the treatment component of health, our resources will always be strained and we will always be short of the need.
Hence research to produce things in India is very vital, not only to bring down the cost, but to save our foreign currency also. and also to make purchases easy. Imagine a highly advanced computerised automatic Mercedes or BMW comes at a cheaper cost than a heart lung machine, which has only a few metallic roller pumps, not even a computer. This is nothing but white collar loot by foreign multinationals. Look at heart valves, they cost nothing to manufacturers, once their R & D cost is over, they are just moulded pieces of high quality metals. If India can make the finest of jewellery from diamond and gold, what stops us making these heart valves ?
If we can make Chandrayaan , why can't we make ventilators, heart lung machines, infusion pumps, Defibs, OT lights , tables and so on .... there are hundreds of medical equipment which we import all over india. It's unimaginable that we even import surgical scissors and forceps thus making those countries richer and ourselves poorer. This should stop by making India a hub of manufacturing surgical and medical equipment along with new innovations.
Research should also be directed in preventing diseases rather than a curative aspect only. Prevention is better than cure, we all know and preach. But in reality we all do the reverse due to control of world wide medical superpowers or drug mafias. Our ancient wisdom clearly says that prevention is key to health for all. Then why not to follow the same. We should invest more and more in research for controlling diseases.
For example we should have a National Programme for prevention of Rheumatic Heart Disease and its eradication. West is making metallic valves to be implanted in RHD patients , whereas in their own countries they have eradicated RHD. One a metallic valve is implanted, the patient is actually living with a time bomb inside the heart.
Preventive Cardiology is of tremendous need in India than mere Cardiology. Morre and More preventive and social medicine graduates should actually become the backbone of the Indian Health System.
Coming to the education and training part, I feel that with most of the training seats ( MCh ) in Cardiac Surgery going vacant, policy makers should shift focus on post mbbs five year MCh or DNB in CTVS. Else there will be many hospitals but no well trained CTVS surgeons.
Spirituality and Humanities should be a compulsory subject in medical training.
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