NRI docs to open free clinics across India

In a major initiative to provide better health care service in India, the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) – an organisation of over 46,000 physicians of Indian origin living in the US – has launched a nationwide rural health programme, covering to train rural medical practitioners for early diagnosing and treating several killer diseases and opening at least one free health clinics in every states of India.

Prior to a two-day seminar scheduled on Saturday in New Delhi, a top-level team of AAPI in the leadership of its president Dr. Sanku Rao and secretary Dr. Prasad Srinivasan has arrived in New Delhi to participate in the summit. In the seminar, the AAPI team would review its previous tasks and formulate the future plan to meet the target.

For the betterment of health care services in India, AAPI had signed a five-year term Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with government of India four years ago.

According to this MoU, AAPI would do several efforts to improve the health care services in India, especially in the rural India, including collecting funds, training rural medical practitioners and opening at least one free clinic in every state.

In this move, AAPI has already opened a series of free clinics in several states like Punjab, Gujarat and Karnataka and scheduled to open clinics in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, official sources said.

Commenting on the free clinics programme, Dr. Sanku told media that the programme had been launched as a pilot project while after observing its result it would be implemented across the country. But collecting fund is major challenge, added Sanku.

For improving the health care scenario in India, Sanku suggested several means, including certification of hospitals, mandatory skill test of doctors at regular intervals, regular scanning of hospitals’ facilities and more specialty fellowship training programmes to upgrade the knowledge of doctors in their specific fields that can be achieved only with strict implementation and vigilance.

The second Indo-US Health Summit is going to begin today in New Delhi where besides AAPI representatives, several representatives from Central and State governments along with numerous medical professionals from both the public and private sectors are likely to present.