Report and pics by Divvy Kant Upadhyay
for Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (GA)

Mangalore, Jul 7: State minister for medical education Dr VS Acharya along with Dakshina Kannada MLA N Yogish Bhat inaugurated the new Spiral CT and Computed Radiography (CR) systems at the Katurba Medical College Hospital at Ambedkar Circle (near Jyothi theatre) in the city in the presence of Manipal University chancellor and president Dr Ramdas M Pai.

KMC dean Dr CV Raghuveer and KMC Mangalore Hospitals’ chief operating officer Dr Sunil Deshpande were present at the inauguration.

Minister Dr VS Acharya was happy that such high-end precision tools were available to the people of Mangalore and neighboring regions, but at the same time he appealed to the management of the hospital to make the facility available to poor and needy patients who could not afford the expensive diagnostic modalities.

He highlighted that the state government had set aside Rs 6,000 crore for education, Rs 2000 crore for health and Rs 1000 crore for sanitation. The sum of altogether Rs 9000 crore was much more than that kept for ‘Krishna or Cauvery or other areas’ he said referring to the recent controversy concerning the rivers of the state.

“The state is working and taking all measures to improve the Human Development Index of this region” Dr Acharya stressed.

Remembering his student days as a medical trainee, Dr Acharya compared those days in late 50s, when it used to take hours, sometimes days to reach a diagnosis in a particular case, to the present scenario where in the diagnostic tools help make diagnosis in a matter of minutes. But he reiterated the significance of clinical diagnosis and repeated his desire to see such facilities available to poor and needy patients at affordable rates.

Dr Ramdas Pai in his address to the gathering, expressed happiness at the city acquiring these enhanced tools that would help detect deep seated lesions emitting lesser radiation than the present machines. Dr Pai also elaborated on the scenario of medical tourism becoming a very significant issue for the state. In the first such big plan for medical tourism, Manipal group is planning for Tie-Ups with Leela Palace Hotels in Bangalore and Jet Airways to provide medical services to foreigners in collaboration with senior and eminent medical faculties of the New York University in the USA.“fourty six per cent of the population in USA does not have medical insurance and the medical tourism industry is expected to become worth 40 billion dollars by 2012” he pointed out explaining the relevance of Medical Tourism to the atate as well as the Nation

Manipal University vice-chancellor Dr Raj Warrier brought humour to the gathering by saying that Medicine these days really needs to serve only ‘VIPs’, which he elaborated to stand for ‘Very Ill Patients’, majority of whom are poor and cannot afford high-end diagnostic facilities. Remembering his days in Wenlock Hospital where the minimal screening X-Ray machine was at once commissioned in an atmosphere that was very harsh on the doctors as well as the medical trainees, Dr Warrier was happy to note that the Government hospital today has a CT machine.

The new machines at KMC hospital are expected to help a great deal, the trauma section and especially the Neurosurgery department.

Dean of Manipal College of Dental Sciences Dr Surnedra Shetty and associate deans of KMC Mangalore Dr MV Prabhu and Dr Anand Kini were present at the function along with senior doctors and heads of departments of the college.