Indian Medical Association should be involved in making health policies: BN Rao

Karimnagar: The Telangana government should involve the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in making health policies, observed Dr BN Rao, IMA State vice-president.

The term of IMA State unit will conclude soon and elections for the new body will be held on November 10 at State IMA office at Koti in Hyderabad.

Speaking with The Hans India, BN Rao explained what they had accomplished. Recalling that the IMA worked closely with the government to protect public health, he said that there is need to improve primary health centres so that health services could reach rural population also.

He quoted their State unit with president Dr Pratap Reddy, himself, Dr Satyanarayana and Dr Sambasiva Rao as vice-presidents, and Dr Sanjeev as secretary, who worked for more than a decade, as the best in the history of IMA.

"We have streamlined accounts, division of schemes between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana IMAs and solved disputes with regard to IMA properties in both the States."

For the first time, we held zonal conferences in Telangana, starting with Karimnagar under BN Rao with Health Minister Eatala Rajender as the chief guest and Vinod Kumar as the guest of honour.

The problems faced by the doctors like assaults, difficulties in hospital registration and menace of quacks have been pointed out. He felt proud that Karimnagar IMA hosted many State academic conferences.

As of now IMA membership is about17,000 and it needs to be increased to make IMA stronger, he said. State IMA strongly requested the State government to allot more budget to health care to cope up in increasing health needs of the common people, he said.

Rao felt that young doctors should move to villages and the government should announce incentives to them to encourage them.