Bangalore: Catholic prelates, NRN laud St John's service at golden jubilee function
 
From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
 
Bangalore, Aug 9: Vatican’s Emissary Salvatore Pennacchio, Apostolic Nuncio in India, First Vice President of CBCI Baselios Cardinal Cleemis Catholicos, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, CBCI past president, Archbishop Kallarkal and many other top prelates of Catholic church in India and IT czar N R Narayana Murthy, Executive Chairman of Infosys Technologies, lauded the yeomen service rendered by the St John’s Medical College and Hospital in the field of medical healthcare to all sections of the people, especially the poor and underprivileged.

They were participating in the launch of the Golden Jubilee Year celebrations of St John’s Medical College in Bangalore on Friday.

The Apostolic Nuncio in India, who was the main celebrant at the solemn Eucharistic celebration to mark the commencement of the Golden Jubilee year in the morning, said the institution established by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), New Delhi, with an unique mission of reaching out to the people mostly of rural and remote as well as medically unreachable areas in 1963 has admirably lived up to the vision and expectations of the founding fathers.

''The vision of t he founding fathers of the hospital has been kept up in healthcare by integrating the dedication of excellence with commitment to social justice. This is a very big challenge particularly for those who are medically qualified and want to reach out to the poor and needy and thus strive to bring about social justice and harmony in society,” said Salvatore Pennacchio.
 

Apostolic Blessings from Pope Francis
 
The Vatican Envoy to India conveyed special and Apostolic Blessings from Pope Francis everybody associated with the hospital and medical college, especially for the high quality of academic and research work undertaken by the qualified and dedicated teaching staff.

He also extended greetings to the Muslim brethren on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr at the end of their 40-day fasting during the Holy month of Ramadan.

Infosys Technologies Ltd Executive Chairman N R Narayana Murthy, who was the guest of honour, congratulated the St John’s Medical College and Hospital for its spectacular growth from a make-shift campus in St Mary’s Industrial School to the present sprawling campus with a full-fledged 1200-bed hospital, nursing home and research centre, to earn the distinction of being Bangalore’s first hospital with adequate medical and surgical services.

''We need innovative healthcare solutions for specific health requirements,” he said pointing out that the facilities provided by leading private players, are far superior to those provided by public hospitals, the vast majority of the poor are generally unable to afford it. He, however, mentioned that leading hospitals like St John’s, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Aravind Eye Hospital etc, were providing ''technologically advanced and affordable healthcare” and contended that vast majority of the people did not have access to such services.

Narayana Murthy, who was instrumental in heralding the IT revolution in Bangalore and in India, underscored the need for ''innovations that leverage the power of technology to further affordable and accessible healthcare to the people in India. Technology and advances alone cannot compensate for lack of investment in basic and quality healthcare.”

Long Way to Go for Universal Healthcare
 
''Advances in healthcare and technology are just enablers and not a panacea,” he said and called for ''adequate political and social will” in a developing country like India by focusing on increased public spending on healthcare, ensuring greater accountability, transparency and decentralizing public healthcare. Being a vast country, physical access to healthcare is a huge challenge and there is an enormous divide between urban and rural access to healthcare, he said.

''Several millions in India and in many parts of the world face fundamental concerns such as access to healthcare, high cost of healthcare and dearth of qualified doctors,” he said quoting a recent report by ASSOCHAM on ''Healthcare and Hospitals” that predicted ''accessibility to either hospitals or medicines would remain a distant dream for about 70 % of Indians, particularly rural India, until at least 2040” with barely 0.7 physicians and 1 nurse available to 1000 persons in the country. Nearly 21,000 children below 5 years die every day mostly from preventable causes.

''These numbers challenge the advances we have made till date and remind us that we have a long way to go before we provide universal healthcare to one and all in India and in every other country,” he said adding: ''In this situation, doctors have an extraordinary power to make a difference by leveraging technology and the advances in medicine to reduce lack of access to healthcare and cost of access to healthcare.

Infosys Executive Chairman said the country has made tremendous progress in the healthcare sector during the last five decades leading to drastic reduction in mortality rates besides minimizing and even eradicating infectious diseases like polio and in effectively controlling epidemics.

In a country like India, he said infant and child mortality occurs largely due to lack of timely care with WHO claiming that three-fourths of all child deaths as ''mainly due to preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria among others.”
 

Leverage Technology, Medical Advances
 
In this regard, he mentioned the UNICEF-funded health programme in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh by using simple technologies like GPS and Mobile which succeeded in saving 6000 new born babies. Another classic example of a marriage between technology and medical advances was pioneered by Dr Steven Schwaitzberg, chief of surgery at Cambridge Health Alliance at Harvard, by collaborating with IBM Research for creating 'real-time collaborative platform for teaching.’ Sequencing technology and other genomic methods to predict and cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficient disorders, diabetes etc, he said.

Baselios Cardinal Cleemis Catholicos, first Vice President of CBCI, in his presidential address, said the St John’s Medical College and Hospital, the only medical college and hospital owned and run by CBCI, has emerged as a towering institution in providing medical healthcare and has lived up to the example of the Divine Healer, Jesus Christ.

Fr Dr Lawrence D’Souza, Director of St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences and Chairman of Golden Jubilee Organising Committee, welcomed. Archbishop Dr Bernard Moras, Archbishop of Bangalore, Bishops Aloysius Paul D’Souza of Mangalore and Henry D’Souza of Bellary and Shimoga were among the large number of prelates and other dignitaries who attended the function. Sister Dr Lucian, President of Sister Doctors’ Federation of India, Dr Salim Yusuf, Endowed Chair, CVS Research for Heart and Stroke Foundation, Ontario, delivered the Golden Jubilee Orations.