Modi hits out at UPA for neglecting health

 PM inaugurates medical college in hometown Vadnagar

 Prime Minister Narender Modi on Sunday flayed the previous UPA regime for neglecting health care in the country. While inaugurating a new medical college and launching a new vaccination drive on his first visit to his hometown Vadnagar after becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Modi said the government has accorded top priority to the healthcare sector.

During its entire 10 years term, the UPA had failed to bring a health policy, which was last formulated during the previous NDA regime headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mr. Modi said.

No empathy for people

The last health policy was announced during Atalji's regime around 15 years back. After that, such a government assumed powered which used to hate development. it did not have any empathy for the people, Mr. Modi said, referring to the UPA government's 2004-20014 tenure. As a result, new health policy was introduced after almost 15 years by our government, he said.

He added that the previous regime had not considered it necessary to increase seats in a medical college in the country, which was facing a huge shortage of medical practitioners.

As a result, very few students could get into the medical field. Now our government has taken up the task opening a new medical college for every three to four parliament constitutions, Mr. Modi said, Inaugurating a medical college set up by the Gujrat government in Vadnagar.

Seats in PG courses

Since we also need good professors and faculty members for new colleges, we have also increased 6,000 seats in PG medical courses in the last one years. Though some people criticised the move, we understand that we will need good professors for producing good doctors Mr. Mod said.  

Besides opening new colleges, the Prime Minister said the government has focussed on bringing down the medical cost to mistake health care more affordable.

Earlier, the prices of stents were around 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh. someone would get a heart attack by just hearing such high price. We decided to reduce costs. So we called the manufacturer and asked them and today, stents are available at just 40% of its original price of three years ago.

He added that similarly, the government has set up a chain of stores to sell generic medicines at subsidized rates to bring down the price of medicines.