17^th July, 2021

11am-12pm

Key points of HCFI Expert Round Table

• The government has started many initiatives (health and social policies and programs) for the elderly such as The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007, National Health care Program for Care of Elderly 2011, pension schemes, national programs for prevention of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke, national program for control and prevention of deafness, etc.
• The outcomes of these measures are grossly unsatisfactory at present, especially in the rural areas where the majority of the elderly population resides.
• Care of the elderly should be a priority for all governments.
• The elderly should be covered under the Ayushman Bharat scheme regardless of their financial status.
• Geriatric care should be made a part of medical education curriculum for both doctors and nurses.
• Awareness needs to be created among the public about the elderly care programs.
• Care of the elderly comes under the purview of almost all ministries besides the health ministry.
• Municipal engineering for e.g. pavements that are safe for walking is a very important part of elderly care.
• There is a need for an umbrella organisation (neutral body) of authority to look after these aspects and monitor them. This body would also coordinate with all the ministeries . Stringent monitoring of programs and projects is very important as they need to be continually evaluated to find out their impact. This monitoring should be done by an independent neutral body for impartial and unbiased assessment.
• Geriatric care is the need of the hour.
• Unless Covid-appropriate behavior is adhered to, the third wave will definitely come in.
• A recommendation can be made to the National Medical Commission that each hospital should have a geriatric OPD and also a separate ward (with 30 beds) for geriatric patients.
• Geriatric medicine has not been a popular specialty, but the fact of the matter is that now the need for geriatric care is increasing.
• There is a need to develop geriatric medicine as a separate specialty.
• Use of technology to improve geriatric care – home care, networking; “I-Doctor”, an intelligent drug dispensing ATM based on symptom based algorithm can also be employed for this.
• We should have targeted vaccination. Six states showing large number of cases should be targeted.
• Cowin has the facility for GPS tracking and mapping. It is possible to map (with artificial intelligence) a geographical area with the number of vaccinations people have received. It can then be compared with the new cases map. An artificial intelligence system can be created for geo mapping.
• Instead of vaccine going to districts where there are no cases, they should be allocated to targeted districts where the number of cases is high.
• Vaccine hesitancy is still present.
• There is a need to understand the procurement process and the challenges faced by the manufacturers; real time data has to be generated in terms of demand and supply.
• There is a need to highlight and let the general public know about the success stories of our vaccination process.
• Lack of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy are two different points, but both are equally important.
• There should be holistic approach to geriatric care.

Participants

Dr AK Agarwal

Dr Ashok Gupta

Dr Anita Chakravarti

Dr Arun Jamkar

Prof Bejon Misra

Dr DR Rai

Dr KK Kalra

Mrs Upasana Arora

Ms Ira Gupta

Mr Saurabh Aggarwal

Dr S Sharma