Health meet raises crucial queries

BANGALORE: Association of IT Dealers (AIT) organised AIT Health Day with the theme ‘Health is the Real Wealth’ in association with Narayana Hrudayalaya at Mazumdar- Shaw Cancer Center, Narayana Health City.Dr Satish Kumar, endocrinologist gave an insight into the various aspects of diabetes and how to control it, briefly touching upon the different hormones and their functions.Dr Moni Abraham Kuriakose, oncologist, spoke about how cancer is caused and the different types of cancers. He also spoke about the factors which are under our control to ward off cancers.Dr Vijeendran, physiotherapist, gave an interesting presentation on fitness and stress management. With slides, he brought out in a vivid manner how lifestyles have brought about lack of fitness, and also made all the attendees do some simple exercises to release stress.Dr Sanjay Mehrotra spoke about the heart and the factors which affect heart functioning. He stressed on weight reduction, especially paunch reduction, as an important factor in reducing risk of heart disease.He explained in great detail why Indians are more prone to diabetes and heart diseases, which was an eye opener for all.The well-known heart surgeon Dr Devi Shetty took the crowd through a presentation on the status of health in India and the requirement of doctors which is in dearth in our country and providing medical facilities to the poor and needy, and also insurance programs.In his preamble speech he presented two facts — health care was fast emerging as the leading Industry in revenue terms in the global economy and health care would be one of the most important issue that governments will be facing in the near future (in passing he mentioned that Obama administration was taking a lot of flak on how his government was addressing the healthcare commitments and their gross failure in reaching the relevant milestones).Briefly he made comparison of the creation of jobs in the health industry which is higher than IT industry and empowerment of women in the low income group.“Only in the health industry does a nurse or an attendee who comes from low socioeconomic group could have an earning of 1 to 1.5 lakhs and also go to the developed nations.” He stressed the need to empower women by employment, so that the future generations are disciplined and lead a better life.At Narayana Hrudayalaya surprisingly a significant percentage of the staff are women including security guards, ambulance drivers, receptionist, cleaners, and most of the other staff.Dr Shetty stressed on empowerment of women, by saying thus “When a woman is empowered she gains confidence, raises children who are confident and can be useful to society. When a man is given a job, he spends most of the money for himself and only a part of his income goes to the family, where as when a woman gets a job, she spends the entire money for her family.”Dr Shetty brought out the fact that at present there is a lack of political will on the part of the powers-that-be to improve and expand healthcare in India. He highlighted the fact that it is the healthcare industry which provides employment for the weaker and poorer sections of society.He also spoke at length about the most downtrodden Pourakarmikas who keep the sewage lines clean so that we do not fall sick, but when the Poura-karmika falls sick, there is no one to care for him.Dr Shetty put up a slide which shows the picture of a sewage cleaner. He said, “This person is a professional like me, who cleans sewage whenever there is a blockage. Before he gets into the drain, he has liquor to avoid the bad smell. However this person normally suffers either due to heavy drinking or due to jaundice that occurs because of his profession. When he suffers from disease he has to stand in long queues at government hospitals and doesn’t get required medical facility. Normally they die around the age of 40.”The members of AIT took a pledge to give up wrong habits for the sake of good health and for their families on the Health Pledge Wall created by Max Bupa health life insurance.The AIT-NH co-branded Health Card was released by Dr Shetty for the members of AIT.