BioVoice News September 2016 Issue 5 Volume 1 | Page 25

these doctors? The answer is staring us in the face: by setting up more medical colleges in tier II and III cities. This decentralizes healthcare, taking it to the people. At some point, and I hope not too far into the future, I would like to see government hospitals where people are not living on the street or the subway just outside, because they have come from great distances. Doctors trained in certain areas are more likely to set up practice there, and so we will not see the kind of over-crowding and heartwrenching pain of patients thronging state capitals or even the country capital, for secondary or tertiary care. What we will see is a flourishing of local talent that is just waiting to be discovered in these locations. A Utopian situation I hope that the 70 percent of our population that lives in rural and semi-urban areas continues to do so. We don’t want overcrowded cities and all the sicknesses that come with them. In fact, as people get tired of big-city problems, I see people moving out and into smaller cities, for a better quality of life. For this, we need to set up a good healthcare system in these places. The current high out-ofpocket expenditure means that people feel the need to work in metropolises to earn the kind of money they do just to afford medical care. With the government setting up colleges and hospitals alongside, this can be avoided. The government setting up more AIIMS facilities will contribute to medical education in sma