Health has become a profitable commodity, remarks Singapore university professor

Prof Mohan J Dutta of National University of Singapore on Wednesday emphasized the gradual losing status of health as an individual right.

Prof Mohan J Dutta, who is Provost’s Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore (NUS), was in Guwahati to deliver the Dr Anamika Ray National Media Lecture at Gauhati University.

The memorial lecture on the topic ‘Global Health Inequalities: Communication Advocacy and Social Change’, was organized by Dr Anamika Ray Memorial Trust with the support of Gauhati University and UNICEF.

“The ‘health’ that we talk about today is limited to the concept of healthcare system that is more inclined towards profit or money making”, said Prof Dutta.

Stressing the importance of communication in eradicating the health inequalities through the process of transforming private health to public resources utilized for money making, Dutta further said, “There is a need to change the whole communication process as the communication is only meant for dissemination of information today, whereas we should give importance on how communication mobilize those information”.

“The ability of people’s participation in the market created by Health Care System has become the main cause for the systematic erase of people’s healthy livelihood apart from the other factors like climate change, displacement by dispossession, Environment risks, uprooting and migration”, added Prof Dutta.

The vice chairman of the trust Rajat Baran Mahanta in his welcome address spoke about the alarming increase in medical negligence and said it has led to coinage of the term ‘medical terrorism’.

In his inaugural address, Dr Mridul Hazarika, the Vice Chancellor of Gauhati University said, “Inequality itself is the alarming term that arises for the rise of crime and can be eradicated through a sustainable social change which is possible at the beginning of our life”.

Veena Kumari, the communication officer of UNICEF, Assam in her special remark presented the picture of rural Assam that is suffering from most of the health hazards.

The Trust organized the lecture in memory of Dr Anamika Ray who had to lose her life for medical negligence on July 19, 2015.