Doctors' role in public health brought out

Updated on: Monday, March 28, 2011

Doctors must be partners in improving the health of the community, act as informed facilitators and not become demigods, said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the National Board of Examination and of the Public Health Foundation of India.

Speaking at the 13th convocation of Sri Ramachandra University here on Saturday, he said the practice of medicine involved the art of communication. He urged the graduates to act collectively as a society to influence the social determinants of health, to prevent disease and protect the environment. “The value framework must involve care and compassion in medical and public health. The community that the doctors serve must be respected and made a partner,” Dr. Reddy said.

Fusion of disciplines

“Basic research in life sciences needs a fusion of several disciplines to discover the causes and cures of diseases. Public health needs to integrate human biology with social and behavioural sciences, quantitative sciences like epidemiology, statistics and demography as well as economics and management sciences,” he said.

It was necessary to understand how the environment influenced health. Factory farming of livestock on an industrial scale had resulted in outbreak of diseases that until recently was confined to the veterinary population.

“In the last 30 years, we have had new outbreaks and 70 per cent of them zoonotic. To feed captive-bred animals with grain, we destroy forests to grow more grain, thereby releasing previously confined viruses and vectors into the veterinary population and human habitat, setting up a conveyor belt for transmission of new infections from wildlife to human host,” Dr. Reddy explained.

Vice-Chancellor S. Rangaswami, in his address, said the university had 3,754 students at present. It proposed to start MD programmes in TB and Pulmonary Medicine, Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion Medicine, and Sports Medicine. A diploma in TB and Chest Diseases will also be started, Dr. Rangaswami said.

The overall pass percentage in the 74 courses offered at the university was 97.78 per cent. A total of 918 students received their diplomas from Dr. Reddy. Forty-two students from various disciplines were awarded gold medals for excellence in their chosen subject. Greeshma Devi J., student of M.S. Obstetrics and Gynaecology and A.H. Ashwin Kumar, student of M.S. in Orthopaedics, won two gold medals each.

Doctors' role in public health brought out

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