orissadiary.com, March 19, 2010
To
Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad, Honorable Minister of Health & Family Welfare
CC
Dr Manmohan Singh, Honroable Prime Minister of India
Smt Sonia Gandhi, Honorable UPA Chairperson
Shri Naveen Patnaik, Honorable Chief Minister of Odisha
MPs from Odisha
Media
Dear Shri Azad,
I appreciate your recent assurance for 10,000 additional medical postgraduates in the nation and draw the following for your kind attention.
KBK region of Odisha is one of the terribly backward pocket in the country with rampant instances of malaria, tuberculosis (TB), etc. Medical facilities are extremely poorer in the region, there are severe shortage of doctors and health professionals in the region, many lives are lost every year due to poor health facilities. There is no tertitary health facilities in Kalahandi-Nuapada region.
Kalahandi is centrally located in KBK. 200 km radius of Bhawanipatna is extremely backward in tertiary health facilities in Odisha including districts like Kandhamal, Boudh, Gajapati and Padampur sub-division apart from all KBK districts of Odisha as well as backward Dhamtari, Raipur (Southern part) Kanker and Bastar disitricts of Chattisgarh. Most of these districts come under tribal backwardness, backward due to hilly areas and drought, and recently all these regions are getting more maoist influenced due to lack of developmental activities in infrastructure and health.
Central Government has established North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute for Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) in Shillong realizing the importance of health facilities in those hilly and tribal pockets, but nothing has been made in Kalahandi/Nuapada region, in the KBK region in general, which is evaluated worst than North Eastern states as per as tertiary health facilities are concerned. Though central Govt. gives equal importance KBK region along with North Eastern states in irrigation and social development, unfortunately in tertiary health facilities Kalahandi or KBK region has not yet given appropriate attention by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Bhubaneswar is about 500/600 km from Kalahandi/Nuapada, though many Govt. and private initiated medical colleges including an AIIMS type institution are coming in Odisha's state capital region nothing has materilized in Kalahandi/Nuapada so far. The region is suffering a lot in tertiary health facilities due to Governmental negligience and ignorance. Hundreds of lives are being lost due to common water born diseases since years in the region, among the years 2007 and 2009 were worst years in recent past bringing Kalahandi to national and international attention for poorer health care.
A Postgraduate Medical Institute would imenesely benefit Kalahandi and its surrounding backward pockets in tertiary health facilities. There has been a serious and contineous demand in Kalahandi/Nuapada region to establish a central Government medical institution and superspeciality hospital in the region.
Recently people of Odisha have also petitioned for a similar institute in Kalahandi.
http://www.petitiononline.com/PGMIK/petition.html
Such institute will act as a national hub for Higher Medical Education and Research and a nodal center and referral hospital for existing Govt. Medical Colleges of all the Naxal affected states specially for Odisha, Chhatisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharastra and Madhya Paradesh. Since Kalahandi is well known for backwardness in health care and centrally located in KBK as well as KBK plus Kandhamal, Boud, Bargarh, Gajapati, Bastar, Dhamtari, Kanker etc districts, it will influnce positively to the whole region and adequate research could be done giving importance to local health care and poor & tribal population.
I hope you will take appropriate step to establish a Postgraduate Medical Institute with 1000 bed Super Speciality Hospital having Higher Medical programmes like MBBS, MD/MS /DM/M.Ch/MDS/Ph.D at Kalhandi in KBK region, one of the most deserving regions of the nation, under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the line of North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute for Health and Medical Sciences in Shillong.
Thank you and best regards
Digambara Patra, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry
American University of Beirut
Beirut, Lebanon
Email: digpatra@yahoo.com
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