I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of MM Rehmani Paramedical Institute of Imarat Shariah Trust. My greetings to Imarat Shariah, Doctors, Instructors, Paramedical students and distinguished guests. I am happy to be with the student community belonging to pathology,physiotherapy and X-ray. When I see a pathology technician I see in him a person who aides the doctors with the results of unbiased pathological tests leading to correct assessment of the problems faced by the patient. Physiotherapists make the limbs of the patients operational through intensive exercises and body treatment. The X-Ray and imaging technicians is like a non-destructive test man in physical test providing valuable data on the internal functioning of all the organs of the human being. All of you provide yeoman service in helping the doctors in removing human miseries with human intelligence and patience. "Service to human being is Service to God". I was thinking what thoughts I could share with this group, who would be providing humane services. The topic I have selected for this interaction is: Healthcare and Paramedical services.

Growth in Paramedical services

In the last few decades? technology has played a major role in the development of paramedical services all over. The doctors are extremely dependent on the support provided by the committed and innovative paramedical personnel in making treatment decisions. Paramedical personnel have to keep pace with the technology and learn newer devices and aides for providing diagnostic data to the physicians or surgeons. For example, the imaging has advanced considerably and many of the features which we could not see earlier are now possible to be seen through CT-Scan and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Hence there is a need to constantly upgrade the knowledge of the paramedical technicians trained now for providing state-of-the art support to the doctors. They can also support the bio-medical technologists in the indigenisation of high-cost medical equipments by the provision of real time user feed back about the efficacy of such equipments.

Committed contribution

The data provided by the paramedical specialists has to be precise and also pertains to the right person. The technician has to ensure thus the samples taken from the individual is correctly marked and followed up till the results of the sample is provided to the physician or surgeon without mix-up. Also he has to be constantly ensuring the laboratory instruments and devices are calibrated and they are presenting true data of the tests. Here again he has to ensure that the calibration is done against well-maintained standards so that no mistake is done based on the data provided by he Technician. One more aspect, which the technician has to keep in mind, is the provision of timely data to the doctors especially in emergency cases. Many times timely available data makes the difference between success or failure to treat a complicated case.

Healthcare delivery in remote areas

As you are aware, our country has over 600 thousand villages and 70% of our population lives in rural areas. Though there are many good hospitals upto the levels of superspeciality in the urban area we have no such facility in rural areas. At times the patient has to travel over one day to reach a place where hospital facilities exist. This is not a desirable situation. We find that there are number of public health centers located in our villages. But, there are limited doctors and paramedical staff in those village PHCs. To overcome this situation it is essential that we train a large number of paramedical staff. Irrespective of their specialization they should be given training in compounding. With this multi-skill training they will become an asset to the rural public health center for delivering healthcare to the village community. Since we have a large deficiency of doctors, the village PHC can be connected through a tele-medicine facility linking to a major health center having doctors with multiple specializations. The paramedical staff posted at the village health center can become a link between the patient and the doctors at the major health center and provide the right treatment to the patient based on the advise of the specialists given through the tele-medicine linkage. This will make the healthcare available to the patient in time without the need for them to travel large distances. The paramedical personnel deployed in different regions should also be trained in the following areas:

? Administering the natural medicines like Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani

? Quality lab to come throughout the country to test the drugs developed out of Indian medicines

Conclusion

The higher the proportion of creative leaders in the medical field, the higher the potential for successes in medical field in diagnosis, treatment and research for discovering new avenues in healthcare. Paramedical technicians can play a major support role in delivering quality healthcare to the rural masses. By being in the village they can also train some of the members of the villages to assist them in their task. This type of support derived from the local villagers will enable provision of satisfactory healthcare to our large masses living in remote rural areas. The Paramedical Personnel should also be trained to work in mobile clinics, which can go around the village clusters on fixed days. This will generate confidence among our village community and make stay in the villages instead of migrating to cities. This will be a very great service provided by the paramedical personnel to national development. I wish you success in all your missions. May God bless you!

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