Indian Medical Association (IMA), as part of its upcoming national meet in the capital, will present a National Health Manifesto 2050, which will outline the challenges that the nation will have to face in the health sector in the coming years and how these have to be tackled.
The health manifesto will be released at the 98th national meet of IMA to be held at Kovalam from December 26 to 28.
The first of the workshops to prepare the draft of the health manifesto was held here on Sunday. The meeting was hosted by the State IMA.
4 core areas
The manifesto will focus on the issues in four core areas that the nation needs to tackle - infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, one health and digital health
At the workshop organised here, experts pointed out that better social interventions were necessary to provide good and healthy food to people. The importance of regular physical activity and the physical environment for the same cannot be stressed enough.
It was pointed out that special care packages have to be devised for the geriatric population, those with disabilities and genetic disorders.
Increasing suicides in Kerala is a major concern that the State will have to address seriously. In the last three years, suicides have gone up by at least 3,000 -10,000 numbers, which is a problem that the State needs to look at closely. A national policy aimed at promoting mental health and encouraging initiatives to prevent suicides was the need of the hour, it was pointed out.
The workshop held here on Sunday prepared the draft of the Trivandrum Declaration, which will be presented at the session on public health at IMA’s national meet.
Those who participated in the workshop included the former Health Ministers P.K. Sreemathy, V. S. Sivakumar and K.K. Shailaja; MLA M. Vincent; former Secretary of Prime Minister’s Office T.K.A. Nair; former member of the Planning Board K. Vijayaraghavan; former DGP Jacob Punnoose; Director of Medical Education Thomas Mathew; IMA’s national president-elect R.V. Asokan; former Vice-Chancellor of Kerala University S.S. Lal, public health expert B. Ekbal and IMA members Sreejith N. Kumar, N. Sulphi, G.S. Vijayakrishnan, A. Althaf and John Panicker, among others.
