Mangalore: Expressing strong opposition to privatization in the health care sector, members of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) will hold a rally from Unity hospital to DC’s office on Wednesday, October 29 at 10am.

Announcing the same at a press meet on Saturday, Muneer Katipalla, state-president, DYFI pointed out on how private players such as Kanachur academy, Mangalore,  easily got cabinet’s approval and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Science’s recommendation to start medical college, despite the fact the institution does not have its own hospital and proper infrastructure.

Meantime, he gave the example of government owned Wenlock Hospital, which is still struggling to have its own medical college, despite serving the society for decades together. “Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore is using the help of political patrons to continue its so-called agreement with Wenlock hospital, to meet its own end”, he alleged.

Health sector must aim at providing service and not to make profits. Privatization is profit-oriented and not intended to help the poor, Katipalla said. He added issues such as lack of facilities at the government-owned hospitals, shortage of doctors are indirectly boosting private players in the health sector. Hence, the government must rectify problems in the government owned hospitals, he said.

He took the Health minister U.T Khader to task for coming up with popular projects  every fifteen days, without any follow-up. He asked the minister to  remove the shortage of doctors and ‘D’ grade staff at the district hospital and primary health care centres by filling up the vacancies. He said, “out of the 1874 sanctioned ‘D’ grade posts, only 1068 are filled, while 806 posts remain vacant. Similarly, out of the 1395 sanctioned post of doctors, only 837 are filled, and 558 remain vacant”.