Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) - Tamil Nadu plans to prepare a roadmap to enhance the competitiveness of healthcare sector in the state, and one of the main focus areas will be upgrading the primary health centres (PHCs) through public-private partnership (PPP).
The industry chamber is also planning to promote solar energy, through pilot demonstration projects, with funding support from Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
R Nandini, chairperson, Tamil Nadu state council, CII, said that the state had 318 hospitals, 8,706 health sub-centres, 1,421 PHCs and 215 dispensaries of modern medicine.
The daily average in-patient and out-patient strength is about 16,000 and 1.85 lakh, respectively.
“The state exhibits better health ratios as compared to the national average. Tamil Nadu has become the Asia’s largest telemedicine service provider, with 20 per cent of the institutions using telemedicine in India located in the state.”
“But the PHCs have a shortfall of around 6,500 health workers, 72 pharmacists and 512 lab technicians,” she noted, adding that PPP would improve facilities and services of not only PHCs in rural areas but also in secondary and tertiary health centres.
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On solar energy, she said Tamil Nadu lied in the high solar energy potential zone as per the radiation map of India, and that CII would work to effectively tap the solar energy potential.
CII would push for establishment of solar generation parks with dedicated infrastructure for setting up utility-scale plants, she said.
Though Tamil Nadu had all the ingredients needed for the biotechnology industry and was the first state to come up with a comprehensive biotechnology policy, Chennai did not figure as a biotech hub in the country, Nandini said.
She said CII had set up a taskforce to identify the right incentives for the Rs 12,137-crore biotech sector to be established in the state.