Dibrugarh [Assam], April 28 (HornbillTV): Elaborating on the Centre’s vision for the healthcare sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his Assam visit, talked about the ‘Swasthya ke Saptrishi’.

Emphasizing that the effort of the government is that disease itself does not arise, the Prime Minister said that the first pillar that the government is focused on is preventive healthcare. The yoga, fitness-related programs are going on for this reason, he said.

The second, PM Modi said is early detection of the disease. For this, he said, lakhs of new testing centres are being built across the country.

The third focus of the government is that people should have better first aid facilities near their homes. “For this primary health centres are being improved,” the Prime Minister said.

The fourth effort is that the poor should get free treatment in the best hospital. For this, he said, under schemes like Ayushman Bharat, free treatment up to INR  5 lakh is being given by the Government of India.

The fifth focus of the government, the Prime Minister said, is to minimize the dependence on big cities for good treatment. “For this, our government is making unprecedented investments on health infrastructure,” he added.

The Prime Minister said that “before 2014, there were only seven AIIMS in the country. Out of these, except one in Delhi, there was no MBBS course or OPD, some of them were incomplete even. We rectified all these and declared 16 new AIIMS in the country. AIIMS Guwahati is one of them.”

On the sixth point of the vision, the Prime Minister said, “Our government is addressing the shortfall in the number of doctors. In the last seven years, more than 70,000 new seats have been added for MBBS and PG. Our government is also treating more than 5 lakh Ayush doctors at par with allopathic doctors.”

The seventh focus of the government is the digitization of health services. The effort of the government is to get rid of long lines for treatment, to get rid of the problems in the name of treatment. For this many schemes have been implemented, PM Modi added.

The Prime Minister emphasized “the effort is that the citizens of the whole country can get the benefits of the schemes of the central government, anywhere in the country, there should be no restriction for that. This is the spirit of One Nation, One Health. This spirit gave strength to the country even in the biggest epidemic of 100 years, gave strength to deal with the challenge.”

The Prime Minister said that exorbitant cost of cancer treatment was a big barrier in the mind of people. Women particularly avoided treatment as it had the potential of pushing family into debt and penury. The government is making cancer drugs affordable by reducing the cost of many medicines to almost half, saving at least INR 1,000 crore of the patients. More than 900 medicines are now available at affordable rates in Jan Aushadhi Kendras. Under Ayushman Bharat Schemes many beneficiaries are cancer patients, PM Modi said.

The Prime Minister along with industrialist Ratan Tata inaugurated seven state-of-the-art cancer hospitals and laid the foundation stone for seven new cancer hospitals.

The cancer hospitals inaugurated today are built at Dibrugarh, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Darrang, Tezpur, Lakhimpur, and Jorhat.

The seven new cancer hospitals, whose foundation stone was laid today, would be at Dhubri, Nalbari, Goalpara, Nagaon, Sivasagar, Tinsukia and Golaghat.