Dr.M.N.RoyIAS (Retired)

Indian population bears a high burden of disease and is ranked 143 out of 188 countries. The highest share of 39.1% of the disease burden of the country is on account of non-communicable diseases of which liver and digestive disorder is an important category. Yet, total expenditure and that from public sources are merely 4.1% and 1.04% of the GDP respectively. The global norm of expenditure on health is 5-6% of the GDP with major share coming from public sources. To the contrary, in India, more than 70% of the health expenditure is privately provided, which puts a huge burden on the poor. The Draft National Health Policy 2015 speaks of inequity in health care and lack of quality as major problems. It is a matter of concern that the policy speaks of healthcare industry and not healthcare service and puts more emphasis on procuring treatment from private sources. As a result the ordinary people will be further denied the access to whatever facility is available, since share of public health services is gradually dwindling and private treatment is costly.
In this backdrop the IILDS is striving to develop an alternate model of healthcare of providing state of the art care for liver and digestive disorder at affordable cost as a mission and without any profit motive. Good quality care requires spending adequate fund which will be recovered by charging the minimum amount enough to ensure sustainability but not to earn profit, the main driving force for private healthcare industry. In order to reduce the charges, the 100 bed IILDS is being developed on donation so that sustainability depends only on recovering the cost of depreciation of assets and operational expenses only and the charges will be lower than that of private hospitals. In spite of that many people may not be able to afford the cost of treatment. IILDS has decided to ensure that not a single patient is not only refused treatment because of their inability to pay but is provided the same quality of medical services. Our dream is to also see that no patient has to go outside the state for treatment of liver and digestive disorder and rather patients from outside the state are attracted to receive care from IILDS because of its quality and affordability. It is a huge responsibility to develop such a model and to sustain the same. The IILDS is committed to establish that and to motivate others who care for the society to replicate the same by providing quality treatment to all who approach the institute. Keeping the mission in mind the dedicated team of IILDS has been working relentlessly and without any self-interest. Whatever tough the challenge is, we are determined to achieve the same through professional competence, dedication and hard work.