J&K LG Manoj Sinha
Srinagar- Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Wednesday called for making advanced quaternary healthcare accessible to all citizens, saying such care should no longer remain a privilege limited to the wealthy or metropolitan cities.
Addressing the Quaternary Healthcare & Research Summit in Srinagar, Sinha said Jammu and Kashmir and the country must now move beyond tertiary healthcare and develop quaternary-level treatment and research facilities to ensure equitable access to advanced medical care.
“Quaternary care should not be a privilege reserved for the economically rich section of society. It must become a right of citizenship and a guarantee of the nation,” he said.
The Lieutenant Governor called for establishing a Quaternary Care Corridor in Jammu and Kashmir to connect district hospitals and tertiary care centres with quaternary institutions, enabling faster access to diagnostics, imaging and specialist consultations.
He also stressed the need to integrate telemedicine and AI-enabled diagnostic tools into the healthcare system and called for expanding fellowship and training opportunities in specialised fields including organ transplantation, oncology, genomics and critical care.
“Advanced care is impossible without advanced specialists,” Sinha said.
Recalling an interaction with doctors during his 2020 visit to Akhnoor under the ‘Back to Village’ programme, Sinha said discussions around rare-disease diagnosis and the shortage of modern equipment had highlighted the gap between healthcare available at district hospitals and the level of care actually required by patients.
He said bridging this gap should be treated as a national priority.
Highlighting the expansion of India’s healthcare infrastructure, Sinha said the country now has 23 AIIMS and 2,045 medical colleges, while Jammu and Kashmir has two AIIMS, 10 medical colleges, two State Cancer Institutes, a Bone and Joint Hospital, a Paediatric Hospital, 52 nursing colleges, 23 paramedical colleges and five pharmacy colleges.
He said the expansion had strengthened primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare, but the next step should be to transform tertiary hospitals into quaternary care centres.
Sinha called upon hospitals to evolve into research institutions capable of undertaking advanced procedures and treatments, including organ transplantation, robotic and precision surgery, advanced genomics, cellular therapies and AI-supported diagnostics.
He urged hospitals to make annual budgetary provisions for specialised infrastructure and emerging technologies such as modern operating theatres, robotic surgery, gene therapy, proton-beam therapy and artificial-intelligence-based diagnostics.
The Lieutenant Governor also proposed a mission involving Himalayan states, Jammu and Kashmir, universities, hospitals, private institutions and innovators to advance biomedical research and address funding challenges.
“We must develop new inventions ourselves instead of importing innovation from abroad,” he said.
Sinha further urged that hospitals be treated as strategic national assets on the lines of highways and ports, with sustained investment in their preservation and development.
He said the ultimate objective should be to create a healthcare system that guarantees equal access to advanced treatment irrespective of a person’s economic status.
“We must create a robust quaternary-care framework that guarantees equal access to the son of a farmer and to a millionaire living in a city,” he said.
On the occasion, Sinha released the summit souvenir and several publications.
Dr M Srinivas, Member, NITI Aayog; Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo; Dr Digambar Behera, President, National Academy of Medical Sciences; Dr Kameshwar Prasad; Commissioner Secretary, Health and Medical Education Department, M Raju; Prof M Ashraf Ganie, Director, SKIMS; heads of various institutions, researchers, scientists and senior officials were present