June 2020

Dear Members,

Season’s Greetings,

Friends, we are facing a global pandemic and India is also reeling under the Corona epidemic. These are the testing times for all health care workers of the country and the Indian Medical Association, in it’s various meetings with the Government, has assured that our hospitals and doctors are with Government at this critical juncture and will contribute by all means possible with the Government requirements. Some of our members are running Covid Centers , while some are running labs for Covid testing also. At this time when the country needs our services, we have to be ready to work for the mitigation of human sufferings. But, the irony is that there is no uniformity in various orders/directions by the Governments. Still all our members across the state, in their small and medium set ups are working very positively to take care of the patients. They are conducting their OPDs
with the required safety precautions and even doing operative procedures as prescribed by the Government from time to time. We must also keep in mind that Corona is not going away soon and hence we have to be prepared for the long haul and be ready to even risk our lives in this fight.

Our doctor members are the frontline worriers for the safety of our countrymen with risking their lives. The N-95 mask and PPE kits would be protective gear for safety; we have received the N-95 mask from the Gujarat Govt and distributed it to all the members through IMA Local branches. To help the IMA members, junior doctors, resident doctors, intern doctors and other healthcare workers, IMA GSB has started Mission IMA Vijay Covid-19. Under these, we have donated N-95 mask, PPE kit, Face
shield, Hand sanitizer, Food packet etc. to all over Gujarat with the help of donors. We are thankful to Dr. Tushar Patel for his valuable guidance and help for the same.

As a matter of inevitable reality, the Hospitals are the Temples of the present day. These temples aim at serving only one God i.e. the Patient. It is in this context that the hospitals need to be very ethical and scientific in their approach to their patients, as a part of their legitimate entitlement, under the rubric of a doctrine of legitimacy of expectations. The recent C-19 crisis has
underlined the importance of Health worldwide. As such, one can hope that from now on, health will be top most on the agenda and priority of all the Nation’s in the near future. This has also brought to fore the fact that the traditional modes of care and cure will not work as they have not proved to be sufficient. A new paradigm shift is vital whereby newer health care delivery
models will be an unavoidable necessity. The entire mode of care and cure has to be blended with Augmented Intelligence, Robotics, Telemedicine, Digital platforms, which are bound to be taken as ‘New Normal’.

This has also brought out another glaring reality, which we need to decipher for ourselves, is that newer economic models for the subsistence of hospitals will have to be evolved and the existing models will have to be revamped in an all- round manner. It has also brought into an acute focus that it is the public health, which is of utmost importance and has to be prioritized, whereby the
preventive services turn out to be the cardinal area of emphasis rather than the hitherto pattern, where curative services were most dominant. In this changed context and scenario, and a desired emphasis on altered priorities the IMA members will have to bear the onus and responsibilities to stand true to all these challenges that are confronting all of us.

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