Mother and child hospital opens for public in Udupi

A new 200-bed mother andchild hospital at Udupi, established by NRI entrepreneur B RShetty under public-private partnership, started functioningtoday.
Vishwesha Teertha Swami of Pejawar Mutt dedicated the hospital, coming in place of the earlier government maternity hospital, at a function in Manipal last evening in the presence of Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare J P Nadda.
The Swami, in his speech said the hospital had more facilities than the earlier one and it should be ensured that poor and backward classes received treatment free of cost at the new hospital also.
Nadda said the BRS venture was a unique and first of its-kind public-private partnership hospitalproject in India.

The state government and a privateentrepreneur had joined hands to provide world class healthcare for the poor, he said.
Nadda said the Union governments blue healthprogramme introduced in 2017 was a strategic engagement of theprivate sector in health care.

The initiative wasconcentrating on disease-specific address towards preventiveand promotional healthcare services.
Affordability andaccountability was the need of the hour in the field of health care, he said.
Shetty said the new hospital would serve people belonging to all sections of society.
With government help,the BRS group could give its best to the society underpublic-private partnership, he said, adding that the ventureshe started in Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Bhubaneshwar andforeign countries like Nepal and Egypt had all beensuccessful.

He thanked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, state Health Minister Ramesh Kumar and district in-charge Minister Pramod Madhwaraj for their support.