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