Health dept to focus on preventive care: MInister Laxma Reddy

​Mahbubnagar: The State Health Department is planning to focus exclusively on measures relating to preventive healthcare and aims to conduct free diagnostic tests for all the people in the State as part of its pre-detection of diseases, thereby creating a comprehensive disease profile of the people.

Speaking to The Hans India here on Wednesday, Health Minister Dr C Laxma Reddy said that the State government was planning to bring in revolutionary reforms in the healthcare sector. He said, “Initially, our focus was to improve the existing healthcare infrastructure in the government hospitals and to provide quality medical services and for this, more focus was given towards treatment of diseases.

However, moving further to our initial steps, now we want to focus on preventive and early detection of diseases among the people. Accordingly, a state level disease profile will be created which would help in taking better decisions for effective delivery of healthcare services to the public.”

The Health Minster said that at present, the State government had brought in lot of developments both infrastructure wise, equipment wise and even enhancing the healthcare staff and doctors in the government hospitals in the initial phase. However, in the second phase, the State government is also planning to give more focus on preventive healthcare aspects and early detection of diseases by conducting mass screening and free diagnosis for the public at the government hospitals.

Already, the State government has mooted its plan to conduct free eye tests to all the people in the state and for this, the health department is making all necessary arrangements in hospitals. “As part of preventive and early disease detection programme, we are planning to conduct mass medical tests free of cost to all the people in the State once in a year,” informed Dr Reddy.

Based on the disease profile obtained, the State government is expected to launch various healthcare initiatives like conduct of mass vaccination drives to eradicate diseases like malaria. The Health Minister said that a major step towards prevention of diseases was to maintain personal and environmental hygiene by every individual. “The major cause of disease is due to the non-maintenance of personal hygiene and keeping your surrounding untidy.

If one can take care of these two aspects 75 per cent of diseases will be prevented,” said the Minister. The health minister enumerated that during the past 4 years the Telangana state government had taken comprehensive measures to improve the inflow of patients in government hospitals.

“Unlike earlier, the present condition of government hospitals has drastically improved. Our main objective is to inculcate hope among the people in the government hospitals and ensure that every individual gets quality treatment in the government hospitals free of cost , said the minister.

For the first time in the country the state government is also planning to start palliative care centres to help the terminally ill people to mitigate their pain in the end stage of their disease. In addition to this health department has also started first of its kind fertility centre in Gandhi General Hospital in Hyderabad to help childless parents get free fertility treatment.