PANJIM: Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Sunday stressed on the need for integration of government and private sector in improving the healthcare facilities.
Rane was speaking after inaugurating a 250-bedded super speciality Healthway Hospital at Old Goa which is set up by a group of 50 private doctors from the State. The seven floor hospital foundation was laid down in March 2013.
Senior Congress MLA and former Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane was also present on the occasion.
“As a health minister, I feel that there should be integration of government and private sector in health care. The government cannot work on its own; it needs the help of the private sector to take the facilities forward. It is very important that we have private sector along with us to strengthen the government-run healthcare institutions. This will ensure that we actually have true healthcare facilities in Goa,” the minister said.
“We need to take decisions and take private players along with us to achieve our objectives in seeing that proper healthcare is provided to the people and we are able to save lives,” he added.
Further Rane said that Goa is still missing the bus of medical tourism and the coastal State has failed to attract people from other countries as a part of medical tourism.
“Various areas in the healthcare sector are missing today. In order to say we are top of line state in health services, we are still missing the boat as far as medical tourism is concerned, we are still not in a position to attract people from other countries to come in the state of Goa to get operated,” he admitted.
“There are other states which are achieving this (medical tourism). I strongly believe that private and government need to work in a united manner to achieve this milestone,” the minister said.
The minister said that the wheels have already started moving to integrate private and government sector and STEMI (STElevation Myocardial Infarction) programme implemented by Goa government is one such example.
“Goa is going to be the first State to implement STEMI programme where we are going to thrombolyse patients in the periphery for which more than 30-40 doctors are trained,” he said.
The minister said, “By using the emergency rooms, 108 facility and the doctors from Directorate of Health Services we will be able to thrombolyse patients and increase their health period and bring them to the closest centre for intervention, where we want to partner with the Healthway hospital,” he said.
