Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Jagat Prakash
Nadda said during his recent visit to Assam that the Northeast needs more
super-speciality hospitals to better serve the people of the region. Well, to
say the north-eastern states lag behind their counterparts in the rest of the
country in healthcare is an understatement. The region just doesn’t have
adequate facilities to provide health services to its people, especially cases
that require special care and technology. Every year, thousands of patients
from the region travel to other states to avail quality treatment. This drains
the economy of the people, driving many families into debt due to the cost of
treatment. Even worse, most people cannot afford to avail timely medical
treatment. The recent report of a sick woman from Njukuak village in Tamenglong
district, Manipur, being carried in a makeshift bamboo stretcher for more than
10 kilometres to catch a vehicle that could take her to a hospital in Silchar,
Assam, to avail urgent medical care speaks volumes about the plight of common
people, especially from hill stations and rural areas. But it was not an
isolated case. We have heard and read about similar stories in the past and it
won’t stop from here. People of the region are faced with multiple issues, from
a lack of healthcare facilities in the villages or even district headquarters
to deplorable road conditions. How many lives could have been cut short all
these years due to disproportionate distribution of hospitals and pathetic
connectivity or lack of it? Isn’t it the responsibility of the government to
provide healthcare to all citizens?
The Modi government has done a commendable job in health
infrastructure development, adding 12 more All India Institutes of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS) over the past 10 years, taking the total number of such
super-speciality hospitals to 20 (excluding six institutes that are not
operational). But the whole of northeast has only one – AIIMS Guwahati – which
was inaugurated in 2023. Among the eight north-eastern states, Assam has taken
the lion’s share in terms of central medical facilities. Health disparities run
deep not only between states but also within a state. For instance, Nagaland
has only one functional medical college and most of the hospitals are
concentrated in Kohima and Dimapur, forcing villagers from remote areas to
travel for hours on road to avail medical care from these urban settlements.
Nadda has rightly said about the need to set up more super-speciality hospitals
in the northeast. He saw this one thing that most central leaders failed to
see. The Centre should look into this issue with urgency if it is serious about
providing equitable healthcare to all citizens. The focus should be on bridging
the gap in healthcare access and quality.
