New Delhi: Addressing the 79th Annual Conference of the Association of Physicians of India (APICON-2024) at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi , Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar, Vice-President, today expressed his disapproval of the commercialization of education & healthcare, stressing that equitable access and fairness, and not fiscal gains, must be the touchstone of healthcare. Referring to India’s civilizational ethos of 5000 years, he said that health and education were always taken to be services to the society, giving back to the society, not earning out of it. “Now these two sectors are becoming Industries. I strongly recommend that we get back to our age old values that will do lot of good to our nation and to humanity,” he added.
The Vice President observed that no profession is as elevated and glorified as medical profession, and called for the highest degree of ethical standards, ever highest next to a lawyer. “Ethical dilution in any profession is painful but ethical dilution in medical profession is unexpectable,” he emphasized. Shri Dhankhar further said that we need 5-star facilities in hospitals, not just as a source of attraction, what we really need is “5 star services”. Referring to certain questionable practices in vogue in superspeciality hospitals, VP hoped that APICON- 24 will debate those practices and bring reforms that will help the patients & the nation greatly. Observing that good health is not merely being free from disease or having facilities to treat everyone, VP emphasized that preventive and precautionary mechanism must be our first choice and called for focusing on that.