GUWAHATI: “The ‘health’ that we talk about today is limited to the concept of health care system that is more inclined towards profit or money making”, said Prof. Mohan J. Dutta who was invited to deliver the first ever National Media Lecture organised by Dr. Anamika Ray Memorial Trust with the support of Gauhati University and UNICEF.
Professor Dutta, who is the Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Communication and New Media at National University of Singapore, emphasised on the gradual losing status of health as an individual right while delivering his lecture on “Global Health Inequalities: Communication Advocacy and Social Change” on Wednesday.
Stressing on the importance of Communication in eradicating the health inequalities through the process of transforming private health to public resources utilised for money making, Dutta further said, “There is a need to change the whole communication process as the communication was only meant for dissemination of information, whereas we should give importance on how communication mobilise those information”.
“The ability of people’s participation in the market created by health care system has become the main cause for the systematic erase of people’s healthy livelihood apart from the other factors like climate change, displacement by dispossession, environment risks, uprooting and migration”, added Prof. Dutta.
The Vice Chair of Dr Anamika Ray Memorial Trust(ARMT), Rajat Baran Mahanta in his welcome address highlighted the history of the Trust that was created on October, 2017 and its way forward with the movement against the ‘Medical Terrorism’ that is gaining its ground day by day.
Mahanta also spoke on the day-to-day increase of the medical negligence that had crossed its limit and thus the coining of the term ‘Medical Terrorism’ was developed.
In his inaugural address, Dr Mridul Hazarika, the VC of Gauhati University said, “Inequality itself is the alarming term that arises for the rise of crime and can be eradicated through a sustainable social change which is possible at the beginning of our life”.
The Trust organised the Lecture in the memory of Dr Anamika Ray who had to lose her life for medical negligence on July 19, 2015.
Veena Kumari, the Communication Officer of UNICEF, Assam in her special remark gave the picture of rural area in the state that was suffering from most of the health hazards.
She added, “With Assam at the second position after Madhya Pradesh bearing highest infant mortality rate that too with 86 percentages in the rural areas highlighted the government’s failure of demand inequalities, rather than the supply inequalities”.