Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Apr 4 : Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said here today that COVID-19 has united India like never before and has truly personified India’s virtue of “unity in diversity”.
While participating in an exclusive “Town Hall” programme conducted by Arnab Goswami on Republic TV, Dr Jitendra Singh said, it is incredible the manner in which the whole of India, North to South, East to West, and even North East, have come together to fight the COVID-19 challenge. He said, this has largely been possible because of motivational credibility and trustworthiness of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to whose call the entire nation has responded in unison.
In response to a question by a viewer, Dr Jitendra Singh complimented the medical fraternity for the yeoman’s service rendered by them over the last few decades and the manner in which India’s health care system had geared itself up to live up to this challenge. He said, medically speaking, it is exemplary because over the last two to three decades, the medical fraternity, even in India, had been mostly pre-occupied in the management of non-communicable diseases like Diabetes and Heart attacks, but the emergence of COVID-19 suddenly pushed back all the clinicians to revive the prescription regimens practiced till 1950s or early 1960s, before the advent of effective antimicrobial drugs, when diseases like Tuberculosis also called for social distancing, hygiene and personal protection, as is being recommended in case of COVID-19 today.
Reassuring the viewers, Dr Jitendra Singh said, India’s health care system has risen up to this challenge at a pace faster than expected. For this too, he gave credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was among the first Heads of States in the world to have raised this issue by sounding an alert, though advising “prevention not panic”, because he could visualize the consequences in case a large and heterogeneous population of 130 crore succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is perhaps the biggest health crises faced by the nation in the history of independent India.
Sounding a note of optimism, Dr Jitendra Singh observed that the rate of COVID-19 infection per population in India is far lesser compared to most other countries in the world. He said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has worked as a medical adjuvant to reinforce the prescription compliance of social distancing and hygiene which the doctors invariably advise in such situations.
In response to a question regarding social media, Dr Jitendra Singh said, while the COVID 19 challenge has made the nation more indulgent with social media, it has also trained us to deal with the ill-effects of social media, like disinformation, etc. To that extent, he said, this ordeal will enable us to emerge having learnt to channelize our energies without getting distracted by negativities.
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