Strengthening primary medical care can improve health indices: Dr Ashoka J Prasad

LUCKNOW: Strengthening of primary medical care in India could improve health indices , said Dr Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad here on Sunday . Dr Prasad is author of 165 books on different topics and has worked as a consultant in several countries.

“We have announced super speciality health centres but we need to ensure that people get basic treatment at the earliest so that they need not go in for super speciality treatment that is often required due to delayed access to health care,” said Dr Prasad, who currently runs a charitable clinic in Gorakhpur.

Dr Prasad figures among the world’s 10 most educated people and was in the state capital to attend a programme organised by Connect Lucknow, to felicitate achieve rs of consequence on Sunday. He said unfortunately, the resolution on mental health and human rights, adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2016, was not ratified by India. It calls on viewing mental health care from a human rights perspective.

A large number of mentally ill do not get insanity defence during legal proceedings though it has been accepted that if they are mentally ill, they cannot be held responsible for their action. Insanity defence is hardly used and education wise, UP has only one law school that has a course on mental health legislation.

“We need to train the lawyers to get the insight to make that plea,” he said. For the general and mental health care services, he said strengthening primary services was the key to make health indices better. “We focus on new super speciality health centres but why not on primary care with adequate diagnostic facilities, so that people get treated at the first place and do

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We focus on new super speciality health centres but why not on primary care with adequate diagnostic facilities, so that people get treated at the first place.

DR ASHOKA JAHNAVI PRASAD

not need to go to higher centres that are now crowded,” he said, adding: “If you give good primary care, why would there be the need to go to a super speciality centre .”

Dr Prasad, who worked in Seychelles, Chad, Togo, Somalia and Mali, said Cuba’s health model was an example of how primary health care could win over health crisis. “In 1959, Cuba was left with just 27 doctors but its focus on primary and preventive health care has made its health statistics the best in the world,” he said.

“What I want is that health should be kept out of politics,” he said, adding: “There should be a separate budget for health as it was for railways a couple of years ago . It should be planned to weed out anaemia, deworming and all such problems that do not need super speciality centres but trouble people so much that they need one.”