annual report1-final.qxd - Overseas Indian

Plenary Session 2
would be addressed in the future. !
PLENARY II
DIASPORA COLLABORATION IN HEALTHCARE
Chair:
Opening Remarks:
Speakers:
Oscar Fernandes,
MOS (IC)
S. Krishna Kumar,
Secretary, MOIA
Dr. Vijay Koli,
President, AAPI
Dr. S. Balasubramanium,
Treasurer, AAPI
Dr. P.S. Sugathan,
Consultant and Deputy
Head at National Referral
Hospital, Brunei
Dr. Balaji Sadasivan,
Minister of State for Information,
Communications and the Arts and
Health, Government of Singapore
This session was chaired by MOIA Minister
Oscar Fernandes. MOIA Secretary Krishna Kumar
began by saying that, in response to Prime Minister
Dr. Manmohan Singh’s call “to work towards
knowledge partnership”, overseas physicians of
Indian origin needed to work and build partnerships
in healthcare with India. In order to catch up
with healthcare in India, there is a need to focus on
basic health services and strengthen specialised
services. There was a good deal of work that had
already been done through five-year plans till the
9th Five-Year Plan. However, there was a considerable
gap that had been outlined in the 10th Plan,
which needed to be worked out and this is an area
where overseas physicians could contribute, if the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had to be
achieved, he said.
Dr. Vijay Koli, President, American Association
of Physicians from India (AAPI), in his presentation,
mentioned that it was time to celebrate the
new relationship of AAPI with the Government of
India (GoI). Giving the profile of physicians of
Indian origin in the U.S., Dr Koli said that immigrant
physicians from 27 countries constituted 23
percent of the existing U.S. physicians and, among
Dr. Vijay Koli, President, American Association of Physicians from India
(AAPI) speaking at the plenary session on ‘Diaspora Collaboration in
Healthcare’ in Hyderabad on January 7, 2006.
them, Indian physicians accounted for the largest
number i.e., about 20 percent (as many as 41,235).
Dr. Koli explained the historical perspective of
AAPI. In order to address the “discrimination in
licensing reciprocity”, a small group was formed in
the 1960s, which got transformed into the prestigious
AAPI.
American-Indian teaching and research had been
facilitated by AAPI through three approaches:
advocacy, continuing medical education (CME),
and charity. In the U.S., AAPI strives to promote
general health among different ethnic groups, he
said.
In India, a number of activities have been initiated
by AAPI as part of the India Health Initiatives
project, he said. Some of these are:
! HIV update in Hyderabad (August, 2005)
! Rural health camp in Karimnagar
! Artificial limb donation, care and compensation
! Fifteen charitable clinics in India (nine in the
U.S.)
! Proposed mental health care hospital in Tamil
Nadu
! Four hospitals in Gujarat, one in
Maharashtra
! Zero infant mortality rate for the last six years
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