Non-medical graduates in medical science can make India healthy and disease free…

Medical reform in India, in simple words achieving a quantum jump in improved rural health delivery system, will not be possible only with more number of MBBS doctors. At best the doctors can only treat the patient when the patient reports to them. But the Government must address the problem at the root level.

Many infectious and communicable diseases reaching the pandemic proportion is not happening just because of the virulence of the pathogen or its multidrug resisting ability. The recent episode of Dengue epidemic in Tamil Nadu and some parts of Kerala reveals only the above truth. Lack of awareness among people is the primary precursor of the above problem. Therefore creating awareness continuously and helping the people to know about various simple measures that would prevent such diseases are needed in a structured way. It means, the task force for creating such awareness campaign, monitoring the ground situation, auditing the activity, alerting our medical system, providing the epidemiological data to understand various dimensions of the disease burden are needed. But unfortunately, we are sitting on wealth and still cry poor.

India is producing a large number of medical microbiologists, biomedical chemists etc., with a basic science background or from the non-medical background. Primarily they would have graduated either in microbiology or in other basic sciences and then would join for a specialized postgraduate programme called PG Medical Microbiology. Unfortunately, most of such graduates would end up in medical colleges as teaching faculty that too for medical students.

Our country is actually wasting the talents of all such graduates. The non-medical/clinical graduates in medical science can be employed by the Government to track the epidemiological details of several diseases, rural health awareness mission, clean India mission etc. Every village needs one such health task force personnel to improve our health care delivery system.

The Decent proportion of health fund can be allocated for the above purpose as the medical microbiologists can easily provide the details about the status of various infectious diseases, quality of life & quality of water, food and finally the overall health awareness of people in such communities. The health task force also can alert our medical system about the possible outbreak any killer or neglected diseases considering various indicators.

The same way, the large number of institutionally qualified vaidyas from faith-based healing system also can be embroidered in the above fabric to improve the health care mission of the Government.

The research scope for all those non-medical graduates in medical science is limited in India and therefore in most occasions, the enormous skill of these non-medical graduates in medical science in analyzing various human samples like urine, fecal material, sputum, hair, skin, tissues etc., are wasted. Their service for creating health awareness and personal hygiene at village unit level will richly help the country to easily achieve the health mission.

If we continue to bank exclusively on doctors to address the health mission, we may continue to battle the war that we shall never win. India needs smart measures to prevent the episodes of various infectious diseases. Awareness is the primary prerequisite to achieving the above mission. We have talents available in the form of non-medical graduates in medical science and healers from a faith-based system.

Time has come Government of India must stitch together all these non-medical graduates in medical science and vaidyas for achieving the larger health goal of the nation.

Engaging all these talents for the wrong job would ultimately mean nothing to the country. When we create a vibrant system to jointly work between the non-medical graduates in medical science and healers from faith system, not only the health awareness increases but various home remedies also can be encouraged as the first step in addressing various medical challenges.

Let us make India healthy with the help of non-medical graduates in medical science- example medical microbiologists and institutionally qualified vaidyas from traditional healing practices.

Dr S Ranganathan