Jammu and Kashmir’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah attended the Medicon-25 medical conference in Jammu, emphasizing the state’s challenge of making healthcare more accessible.
Addressing the gathering, the CM highlighted the disparity in healthcare quality between urban and peripheral areas, stating that subpar medical facilities in rural regions force people to seek treatment in cities, leading to overcrowding and additional strain on urban healthcare infrastructure.
“There are all sorts of debates and discussions that go around on the subjects that Medicon is going to touch upon. Our challenge is to make healthcare more easily accessible… Our peripheral areas’ health care is not to the standard that we require it to be, which is why everyone floods into cities…”
Infrastructure Development in Peripheral Areas
CM Abdullah stressed that the key to resolving this issue lies in improving and expanding medical infrastructure in rural areas rather than solely focusing on urban healthcare.
“The only way we can remove this pressure is not by improving or adding to our infrastructure in Jammu. It’s by adding and improving our infrastructure in the peripheral areas…”
He further highlighted that new Government Medical Colleges (GMCs) have been established at the district level, addressing a long-standing gap in medical education and emergency care.
“There was a time when we only had GMC Jammu and GMC Srinagar. Now, we have GMCs at the district level. We have to augment and improve the emergency handling capability and capacity at those GMCs…”