In this engaging podcast, we take a look into the extraordinary life journey of Mr. Swadeep Srivastav, the founder of Heal Foundation. Mr. Srivastav is a dedicated individual who has poured his heart and soul into making a tangible impact on the world. Together, we’ll uncover his inspirational story, the genesis of Heal Foundation, and the significant strides they’ve made in improving the lives of countless individuals. This conversation offers a unique window into the world of philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, shedding light on how one person’s utmost commitment can serve as a healing force, uplift communities, and empower those who need it most.

Join us as we embark on a compelling exploration of the life-changing work accomplished by Heal Foundation under Mr. Srivastav’s visionary leadership.

A background of the founder by himself

Health care is something which is very much required and not paid much attention to. So that also talks about my background and what I have done in my last 25 years of career. It is that we have developed a concept called information therapy. Like in health care, you think of diseases and treatment and therapies and various technologies and sort of therapies cardiac therapy, diabetes therapy, neuro therapy, depending on what type of diseases are there. We say that the mother of all therapies in health care is the information therapy. And that’s what I have been doing for the last 25 years. And that’s what my public health doctorate is also in health care, public health communications. So also I started my career with the Apollo Hospital, the largest, the fourth largest corporate hospital, which was launched in Delhi in the year 1996. I became the first GP and I worked very closely with doctors and patients and including the hospital management company. He was the founder and chairman there and worked very closely on, of course, creating awareness on what the hospital was about, what problem it will solve in North India and all over India, and how it will stand out to be become one of the biggest medical treatment hub for whole of Asia and for foreign patients also.

But also during that course of time, I learnt was that while at one end there are doctors who want to provide treatment and on the other hand, there are patients who come in search of treatment and they what is the what is the link between both is the information awareness. So a doctor, if he plays a very important role of creating awareness, coming out and informing what we call patient education on a continuous basis. If he does so, how it helps the patient more than anything else is that the patient gets empowered in terms of knowledge, understanding, and then his whole treatment profile is improved and treatment journey becomes better. And with a more empowered patient, the treatment journey is better.

So that’s why what I learned at Apollo and implemented in my own practice, I came out and in year 2000. To India in the year 2000, formed India’s first health, communication and health awareness company by the name of Biomedical Health and our core objective was engineering.  So our overall objective was to create a connect between all important stakeholders, because what was happening before that health care was just evolving. In the year 2000 and the tertiary care was now becoming widely available, wider, available across the country with hospitals like Apollo Escorts, then Max Health Care, then 40% care and doctors and a lot of other hospitals in the South and East India. So they were coming mushrooming.

So on the treatment side, there was a lot of development in terms of the tertiary care getting strengthened, overall health care treatment, getting more power in India in terms of logistics, these coming latest equipment’s coming latest, the all the best doctors and Indian doctors are considered to be one of the best in the world. Then the world has seen even the NRI doctors who are based in the US, UK, they are considered to be one of the best. So the skill sets were there, the facilities infrastructure are building up and healthcare was getting stronger. But what was missing in this whole piece was the, the patients they were left the people, their families, the caregivers.

They were totally left on the mercy of the doctors in terms of how much informed they are about the mercy of the hospitals, hospitals. There is a big shortage of there is a big demand supply gap was and today also demand supply gap in the healthcare delivery in terms of very a smaller number of doctors were patients as per the global standards, less number of nurses were patients as well driven standards. So the doctors and the health care providers, they were very busy in terms of providing the treatment, but they were not able to take out time for information, for awareness, for educating their patients, educating their families. So somehow the treatment model was not going in the wrong direction.

That’s why in the last two decades, what you have seen is that the trust level between the healthcare provider, the doctor and the patients that has gone down drastically. And that was because of one of the prime reason that everybody was busy in their practice and surgeries and treatment. Hospitals were busy filling the beds. Nobody was actually given time to empower the patients in terms of knowledge, information to so that they make the right choices and more. What was missing? And that’s where India is standing.

Biggest thing which was missing is that there is a huge there was a huge gap created in terms of people who are not getting aware about taking control of their health. They were coming to the hospitals and health care facilities with diseases, a lot of preventable diseases like what you see today, a lot of heart attacks in India raises a lot of cancer, like preventable cancers, like oral cancers and all these cancers happening because of tobacco and all that.

A lot of early diabetics, like we are startin, more than 7% of the population is diabetic today, which is the largest diabetic population in the world. And that is a big what you can call is a big epidemic. Then even what Covid came in between. So not of these preventable diseases were growing. So the the cost of health care, the burden on the healthcare infrastructure was growing and nobody was taking the responsibility of going out and empowering the people in terms of their health care, their wellness, the prevention modules, what they should take and not fall ill.

It was more in terms of patients being seen as a community. They fall ill. Now they come to the hospital, take up to the doctors. And 70% of health care facilities are in private sector. Only 30% government can provide. And that’s a big gap. So they were on the mercy of the doctors and private hospitals and doctors. And that was not a good balance which was happening. So there we took up the role as having a health.

I worked for about almost 15 years before I exited that company to a next Nasdaq listed American content health content weeks at a conglomerate. And in the meantime, we realize that who are the most important stakeholders? You can actually provide that, then fill that piece of health care, education, health education and education. So we realize that media is one of the most important things. And here it was. If you look at decade before 2010. So it was the traditional media. So they were traditional health writers.

When I met the editors in year 2000, I went across a lot of editors in the top media houses, including the TV channels. I realized that they feel that this the health, that the journalists are not well trained to do the health writing. That’s why there’s a big gap in health stories. Coming up, a guy was covering a crime, a guy was covering politics, entertainment, and next day he was asked to go and cover a health subject, go and talk to a doctor, cover the hospital press conference.

So there was a lot of gap in terms of understanding of the health, healthcare issues and reporting. So a lot of big media were not giving space to healthcare stories, and there was a great need of more health media, starting with Health Pages TV channel started. We started with health shows. That was a great need. So then I created a group called heal that’s called Health Assistant Authors League, and we connected all these health media from print and TV. The digital was still evolving. The social media and the influencers were still not there. So we connected to them and we started the largest works. Largest.

A civilian training program of these of these health journalists, we have trained more than 1000 health journalists through the information providers like the key opinion leaders, top doctors of the country’s top public health experts, top scientists of the country have about 1000 of them in command of each platform. And we are committed to the foundation in 2010, and that’s why it became one of the biggest platform in India for knowledge sharing, in health care and training and capacity building of health media, so that we have seen the whole journey of our all the top health media, all the top media houses.

They started health pages, dedicated health pages dedicated as signals, the health shows which are started now we see podcast happening. So many health care we see. So all these things started. That was the beginning of the whole journey. And for me to be in the initial part and contributing in terms of building that whole ecosystem of health care information, so you can give credit to a lot of people like the doctor Naresh, to the pharma giants in creating health care and infrastructure, marketers and pharma industry. But there are very few people who work on creating the whole ecosystem of health care information, and that is our core role as foundation. We also have our division called Heal Health Connect Solutions, and we work dedicatedly on health care improvements.

By now there are different modules. You all will be out of time and talk about those modules also. But primarily it started with the whole idea. Then there should be an interaction and then in turn intersectional integration of doctors coming out, scientists coming out of public health, experts coming out, government people coming out, everybody coming on platforms and loose interacting with the media. Different media channels, and even through various other channels of public talks. As I told you then social media channels for another complaint and they just started. So Facebook started.

So a lot of doctors, a lot of people like us, we started using Facebook as a channel. And so, so, so that’s how this whole journey started. In 2010 to 2015. I realized that this whole dynamic is changing. The new age media is coming. So that’s how I exited in 2015, and I fully went into the health education program through a foundation and created a platform, Correct Solutions. So now what we do is that we now very actively so one is we have a regular program in terms of media workshops, national health writers conventions, connecting to the health medias of the country, giving them interesting stories, content from time to time.

So then because in health media writing and story writing, any type of writing, even in your podcast, even your shows, TV shows everywhere, it’s very important to have accuracy in health care information because you can ah, and in terms of giving a wrong, which happens every day around political news or wrong Bollywood related news, there can be a lot of gossips, there can be a lot of backtracking. You announce something and it is wrong and you. So all those things can happen. But not in health care because the information what you give. Like like what I study, we have been reading so many of times.

Once a study comes, coffee is good for your heart. Then suddenly after a month you really study. Then coffee is not good for your heart and all this, everything. So this sort of confusion and then in particular in a time of pandemic, the Covid time, what we realize that there is one pandemic, which was a disease, pandemic of Covid, there was another pandemic, which was the information which we call infodemic. So infodemic became very strong and a lot of misinformation, the different unreliable sources, anybody any time taken a reckoning, standing up using a social media, saying I am an expert and throwing out some ideas and use of this disinformation.

So what are people who are confused? So they are. Our platform deal played a very important role in sort of getting the right kind of credible sources, getting the scientific literature in place. Create credible content and work as a bridge between not only the information providers and the health care providers, but also other industry players like your medical device industry, your consumer healthcare industry, your pharma industry. Everybody’s objective is at the core of everything is the patients and the people, and everybody is objective is to connect and talk to that patient in different ways.

Pharma industry talks through the doctors, whom they all care practitioners. Similarly Ayush industry talk to the experts. Similarly, you have got medical technology who also work with the doctors and hospitals, medical devices, consumer healthcare drives and goes and talks to the consumers directly through various media. But at the core of everything is that you are patient and the consumer who gets so confused. So our responsibility, the code is fine. That’s what we call information therapy, is that our core responsibility is to be play a very active role in generalizing the right information, to the right to alter the audience, whether it is about any disease awareness, it is about the treatment model.

Reintroduction and new technology coming in for different animal devices coming. So our diagnostics, everywhere there is a roll of information and that right information, credible, credible source information should reach the people so that they are able to get better informed and take the right decisions for themselves. So just one question from my side. We see a lot of social media influencers like who call them very smart and everything. They are trying to provide information on health as well. So many times they are not right. They are just making content for gaining more likes, more views. So like this real foundation, like looking into it like if it is wrong or if it is right and I think otherwise. So as I told you, we created a platform in which we do National Health Writers and Influencers Convention.

Yet we have just announced that the National Health Writers International Convention at HP daily in and of November. And one of the core objective is to bring the top experts and EMS experts and everybody together and interact with all these social media influencers, YouTubers, health media guys and inform them about the source of information, the credible source, the credibility of the information, why they should believe in and look at the right sources and look at the right information. And these are training modules. So for them, that is one thing we are doing and most to see what happens. What is the danger of social media. That’s why I said infodemic in Covid. What to do with gaps? What we realize one is our healthcare infrastructure was not well prepared. That’s why we saw so many sufferings and deaths, and particularly the preventive and the primary health care infrastructure was very poor. Yeah. So that we realized that was one thing.

Of course, nobody was prepared for Covid 19 situation. Even America and all the developed countries also failed. But that is one thing. Government acted very proactively, no doubt. And they were able to curtail using various methods and in an organized way. Even still, India still did much better than lot of other countries. Even the developed countries like Italy and France, and all the more deaths per population than in India. So what we realized then and second was the infodemic. So much of false information, information and people getting confused, like even information and credible information or even vaccination at one time, government spending grows and grows out of opinion

Going out and talking, telling the population, let’s get vaccinated quickly before the second wave come before the third wave. On the other hand, there are people who are who are misguided. They are creating fear about vaccination. And this happened for many things for that matter. There are so many different type of treatments now, and a lot of untested drugs, untested methodologies, everything products, a lot of things are floating around production. So that created a lot of confusion. So what we did was that we created our own channel health for all.

And every Sunday we do a show on Health Forum where we have brought in about in Covid times. We have brought in about 350 health experts from across the country talking to the people, giving the information through our channel. That is one thing. We have done more than a few thousand, I think 2000 health articles in the last 3 to 4 years around that right kind of information going out. We have been supported heavily by all types of industries, all types of organizations, including Ministry of Health, governments, and actually and all these companies 1.2s wherein everybody believed in one thing that, yes, we need to have a methodology of providing the right information, reaching to the people.

And people don’t get misguided and don’t fall prey to wrong, but you cannot do the other point. And that’s where the social media and dangerous role came in last five years, I would say, because everything in social media is based on senseless sexualization and going out there as if you see that we have eating in social media is about likes and shares and morality. And one of the most dangerous issues in media you find is WhatsApp, because anybody can become a publisher on a WhatsApp and take a video and publish it in any group. Nobody knows that. Nobody is on the source. If you go back and ask that person, from where did you get this? I don’t know, somebody forwarded me, if you go back, at least if you look at the chain. So somebody forwarded somebody to somebody to somebody and it reached everybody. And it was true. There was no credibility on that video.

A lot of people suffered because the fear and the agony created, or a lot of people fell prey to the wrong things, which they should not have done for their health care. So social media that became like this, you cannot do what I know, Metta and Google and other organizations you are their big organizations on social media. They have definitely tried to do fact checking then preventing fake news on their own level, but then that damage is more definitely created because of the whole urgency and competitiveness in terms of getting eyeballs and getting the likes and variety. So that should be taken care of.

We have done our bit. Of course, everybody can do a small bit. India is such a huge country. 140 crore population, at least not less than a few crores of social media handles. And so those things are and it is such a widely searched subject. There are 1 billion health cultures every month tapping on Google. So that’s a huge thing. This is the seventh largest searched subject. So what that of course I would venture first would be Bollywood or Hollywood entertainment. Politics would be one of them. So but health is the seventh largest.

I have a question on Google searches with health issues. I think even if you are having a headache, Google is sure that you are having kind of like a brain tumor or something like that.

So what happens that and that’s a big, very good, very wise, very good question. Because Google and that’s what now I mean I interact with a lot of my doctor friends. You know, it becomes clear when India’s top doctors and their members and we do a lot of interaction meetings and we have WhatsApp group. So what I realize is that everybody today’s doctors in the last five, seven, eight years since Google has become popular, more accessible, more widely, use more smartphones. Going into hands, I think smartphone coverage would not be less than 90% in India.

So everybody’s got a smartphone, everybody’s on Google, everybody’s watching videos. So the biggest challenge what the doctors, my friends and the whole community feels is that is doctor challenge you doctor Google they call Dr. Google okay. So Doctor Google creates a lot of confusion. So any disease any symptom of patient feels the family does the whole search and they come with a whole list of questions. And many times we ask a lot of wise questions also that why is this? Why this cancer? What is the treatment and what was the cause? Why, if this pain has happened in the heart, is it a pain? It is not. So that is one good part of it that you are coming well informed, but over information is also not good for you.

That’s the problem is doctors are facing that a Google doctor comes, a patient comes with a lot of Google search and they call them Google Doctor. And he gets into some very irrelevant discussions, questions wasting time and not only getting himself consumed as a patient, but even at times confusing the doctors. So that’s how the whole disturbance is created. So you should get it on leave certain degree of what you call decision making with the expert doctor, because he has grown with expertise. Today he is a top cardiologist because he has seen more than 3000 cardiac heart patients and treated them. So by practice, he has become a cardiologist. So what all he has learnt in his journey of 15 years, 20 years by touching base and treating hundreds and thousands of patients cannot be acquired by just doing a half an hour search on Google information.

And Google is an open enrolment, so any information can pop in on the first page. Maybe it will not be necessarily the right incredible information. So that’s great confusion. So overdependence is not the initial reading understanding for that purpose. The first level Google is good. But over the over dependence, if you want to go through literature, then you should look at a lot of credible science based magazines and which a layperson is not supposed to understand, read and understand. So mostly should be left on the healthcare practitioners, the doctors who are expert in that because their expertise come from their practice.

As AI is trending so much and has replaced a lot of jobs. Do you think doctors jobs also at the risk?

A very good question. I definitely recommend such articles and whether doctor’s job is in danger or not. I don’t think doctor Job was ever in danger will ever be in danger. Because see, that’s what that’s the difference. So what doctor has learned so widely? If you go to a specialist, you go and search online, or you go through search through various websites, or you go to the hospital directly and look for a doctor. So what do you look into that doctor? I go to the doctor because he has got this experience.

He has got this patient feedback. He has been to practice for more than 15 years, 20 years. So so that doctor expertise has come because of his own hard work and practice, which is again how that part. So I can always everywhere doctors, even in terms of journalist and everywhere in your writing, tomorrow you will have had a tool to do a podcast. You don’t know that. So salary would not be required. It’s not. And so I can only work as a basic facilitator. So we are also in our group. We are developing a tool called under the Brand Health Bureau.

And we are developing a tool to help doctors create good content. So we are giving a template to them. You fill in the keywords and that tool is so much mastered for with respect to health care and medical content. We’ll give you a 250, 300, 400 words. Good article within a few minutes. So that is but then final editing, final inputs. Everything has to be done better even in information scenario in patient treatment so that the percentage will never go. Do you think you would ever take your mother to a doctor and be satisfied? So what you will do? You will go to a doctor and then again you will go to the real doctor system sometime.

Can Communication and awareness campaigns can help bridge the gap between rich and poor when it comes to accessing quality healthcare services?

So health care is of everybody. It doesn’t look at poor or rich heart disease. Heart attack can come during the work. Also to the rich. So what healthcare complications can do is maybe work more in terms of providing a lot of information on all types of facilities. That’s where we feel that they are like when we work as in the commercial sector. Then we see a lot of hospitals, top doctors, private sector day coming forward and providing the information. We are the best hospital. We are the best doctor. We are this. We have that. Yeah, but not as a responsible healthcare company. That’s what we do at the foundation is to go out and look for guys who are working at the bottom of the pyramid, who are working in for the villages, who are working for the poor people.

There’s so many charity hospitals, there are so many excellent government facilities, government departments, there’s so many combat schemes which cover patients. And there are so many individual philanthropic doctors who are providing so much of free care or subsidized care for the poor. So it is our responsibility to bring them forward right about them, right about. I would in fact, recommend you also to do a series of podcast on such guys who are working on providing the pyramid, providing health care to the poor.

One of the biggest thing we need we do as a Healthcare Changemakers series in terms of coffee table book. So when we are doing that search, we are the innovators. Since independence, we covered 75 years of independence certified and teaching because one of the most attractive names in all the private sector owners, hospital owners, pharma owners, one of the most attractive names and he is Dr and his wife, they were one of the most qualified doctors at that time and they Dr. Prakash yeah yeah. And they left everything and they went to a village around that village and started giving health care because the health care was much required. There were no doctors in the 50km. And they grew.

The families grew up into those villages. So those are the people we as and continue to look forward to in our national health matters connection. This is the end of the pregnancy. So we have selected 23 such healthcare providers, doctors and philanthropist who are working only in the villages. So for them, commercial thing is not the thing. They are not there. They are not doing medicine practice just to earn money. They want to give back to the society and they are doing that. So thank you communicators. Our responsibility is to bring them out, talk about them so that even if the poor can not go to a big corporate hospital, he can go to them and get the same quality of treatment. So that’s how it should happen.

How does the media like TV, newspapers and internet affect how people think about?

I told earlier. What is health care is what is a behavior. So when you talk about any preventive health, it’s a very common thing. You are what you eat. So nutrition food what you eat is something what creates you as a healthy person or a non-healthy person. So that how that should come that information comes from the media, from various channels, from various stuff. What you read around, that’s what is in the nutrition is the doctors, what they are talking about. It is talking about new fad, new trends like intermittent fasting.

So there are so many other facts which are not outlined. I’m very much inspired by the whole government program and how the grains, which we have been commonly using as a staple, and that is they are so carbohydrates that of the wheat or what we eat, the rice, what we eat. So then those grains are so carbohydrate rich and we have been totally depending on them. And our grain production, you see, have been majorly focused towards these grains because they were easily available government subsidy. So you see a lot of giving and all these production very high. So what government has done this whole research and overall the whole time like minded healthcare ecosystem have come together, not only supporting the food chains are supporting everybody, supporting.

That’s why government has now started celebrating millets month. So even at G20, they served millet food because commercialized millet or these sort of grains which have been left behind. They are such healthy grains, easy to produce, and farmers don’t know about it. If we get them to produce and they are much healthier, ten times healthier than Normal roti. Yeah, they are less carbohydrate, less carbohydrate and sugar. They are interlinked so more is more sugar. So three roti normal roti one one roti. What do you eat on this? This? No. Of this given we is equal to three spoons of sugar. We never realised that we have been banging on rotis.  Through the latest advancement on the Roti, we are so much heavily dependent on carbohydrate food. You can have Chicken.

If you look at the Westerners now, they have dealt with it. Most of the developed countries, if you look at their palette, it is mostly full of chicken, vegetables, everything. And rice is just a very small piece there. Or a bread is just one bread, which they dig a lot. So that that’s how we need to change there. There’s a very active role of the media, the influencers, the information provider, institutions. They have come out, they are writing books, they are educating on these issues. So health care is something is about behavior. Every healthy practice comes from the behaviors. And this these are channels for behavior change. And I call our PM one of the biggest behavior change icon particularly in health care. The way he started the search at the Him took up the room one day and people were laughing. A Prime Minister of India has to pick up a broom. And that became the symbolic icon for the whole world, for India. Everybody started following. So the important such mission became successful. Open defecation became the guys who are supposed to groom the community, which were like cleaning and grooming. They felt so proud about it. The Prime Minister has a kind of diary. So all those be habit changes.

Behavior changes happened because it is very important to play. And of course lot of education awareness. Covid taught us that, see, we need to be proactive in taking control over how what happened in Covid, what we realized, what the maximum had done. Seven who found a home augmentation? So wherever you go, morality  police have heart disease. Kidney disease. Right. So those are the people. Liver, fatty liver, liver damage. Those are the people who would not survive. Most of them. 70% of deaths were on the commandment to go. Mom and patients look at diabetic and diabetic problem like that, right? So then they went to the hospital and they realized it is too late and they could not survive young patients because they were worried. So what the country realized, what are people like?

What the government learned that prevention is the best tool. That is what will work in a country like that. We cannot keep taking out doctors and building hospitals and giving everybody treatment and care that burden a country like America is not even able to bear. That’s why the the cost of healthcare is so high. The burden of healthcare is why till the day the insurance is paying, you are safe that the insurance is not paying for you. You are more than that in America. So that’s where India cannot. We are not America. We are a different country. We are not. We are developing. We are almost everywhere.

But then we cannot bear the burden of healthcare on our system. So that’s where we need to move towards. You do not care about the health care who don’t know what is wrong with them. Right. So that is the reason now. So this is all behavioural change. So today if you are 25 years old then you should realize that the day, I become that year old, I have to start going for my adventure. So go for a preventive health check. But what do you think when you become 30 years old? Or how to become a beginner here and will get me some entertainment fun. And then after 30 years, they start accumulating.

So that’s how after 35 years, you start seeing people becoming hypertensive sleep deprived, sleep disorder for diabetics 40 years to age. So yes, are a manifestation that leads to a bigger problem. How did this one study. And here it is. You got hypertension. You got diabetic. You all step by step. Your dieting became uncontrolled. It started affecting heart. It started affecting eyes. It started effecting different organs. So that’s how this whole manifestation starts and grow. But this can be prevented. So you can always slow the progress.

If you go for preventive health check on a regular basis and you adopt a healthy lifestyle, daily life style is very, very simple. There is no science. That’s what we as educators are educating everywhere. It is about what you eat, a healthy diet or less, one eating and also doing some. Some exercises, even as simple as walk and now yoga again. Modiji has played a very important role in making yoga. So after he has taken in international yoga 1s is celebrated all over the world is international. You got it on 21st June every year. So all those things have awareness and knowledge. It is there and is now. It is the responsibility of the younger population. See, you have 50 years for 60 years for the disease. So, they are in the management phase. He may have diabetes, hypertension, heart attack.

Unfortunately, you know the success of cancer treatment. So it’s very cool I have heard about a medicine. Something big with us, so it was like 100% reserved. It is still true that UK Britain is coming out with one such injection. Immunotherapy is called immunotherapy that that will help in treating. But still it doesn’t mean what we read in media. Treating all guys not like holograms. Very selective in what stage it is. Fourth stage. Last stage. Whether it.

You want to know if it is still deciding of the information I sell so easily? That’s what you don’t don’t hear. Read on Google and original media and believe it. You have to talk to the experts. You have to understand the science. And then, so some information is good for you, but always relying on experts to get the final information which is right. So of course, this is what is going to happen when the youngsters have to take the responsibility in terms of lifestyle modification and preventing many diseases. And that’s how the whole health burden on a health care system will get balanced. It can never show disease to one again. It’s like a certain body spread like that.

But you can always prolong the disease and prolong the suffering, prolong and prevent the suffering to prevent the suffering and the society and then people is about their economy and their country. Actually, there is a trend these days of eating fancy food junk for youngsters are not realizing what they are eating. So we have up to ten years. Eight years. Now you start it so it becomes your own habit. Simple. Unless we realize science is something else. And same thing is happening with the ancestrally very quick drive through.

So all the junk food has become So they make it fashionable. That’s how junk food is marketed and today’s generation is addicted to it. How can we stop this?

We should know our own ways of when to stop doing so. Why McDonald’s is good? Because it is good business. But what matter? Sometimes it’s okay. These are for binging. Binging is always occasional. It should be occasional. Actually, you should not Binge every Friday. Everything right is not healthy. So that’s fine. But when you are eating out also and having fun, you can always do that whole balance in your. So that is, eat more. chicken. That is still better. And of course, drink less.

We have heard, like in different parts of India, the cultures different. So the diet should also be the different according to the region. Is it?

Yeah, it is true. It is like for example, you say Mediterranean food is something for Mediterranean region like seafood. There are a lot of studies which have proven that a lot of diseases are prevented due to this, people who eat more fish, like neurological diseases, these are less in number. So it is a food difference. You know the type of food we eat in India, Mumbai is totally different. Street food selling food is completely different. But it’s not about the food, what you get.

And even all over the world, even thinking about how you make your judgment to consume, how much of the terms of the quantity and the quality, both terms. So that balance is important. I don’t think any food matters. I think we have climate or region wise food is available. And if you look at corner of the country, pizza is available, Domino’s and delivery is available for KFC anywhere you actually go to the deep of Kerala, to the deep of Ladakh, you find a corner there. But we find and can can see the balance and the physical activity is very important. That’s what is missing in the younger generation. I’m sorry, organism at the office, which is pretty cheap. You have to come back here so I can go home.

Are there any more things that government should do according to promote health care?

I would say that first of all, I came to know that government was trying to create a health portal also. But that is not the responsibility of government to create one health portal, because health information sources are many. That would solve the problems. But government should definitely work on creating credible health information sources like we do as we do the training programme. Government should actively support these training programs of the health media influencers, bringing the right kind of experts, educating them on a regular basis. That is one role.

On the information provided side is government should other than the health care delivery sign on, government is doing like government has come out with the issue to cover. Even fewer and lower side of that scheme is also growing. So I just want to screen for complete health insurance to fight lack of coverage. Those are good schemes which governments are implementing. Government is definitely implementing in a very effective way. So there are a lot of affordability fact where government has worked on accessibility and affordability. So. many drugs to be made available free for everyone, which is there. They’re working on malaria.

They’re working on so many other things in making the drugs available. The government scheme of general medicines availability is also done very well. Goals of capping the cost of various consumables and devices like stents. The implants the tablet in a very good way, which will make it more affordable to the people, although they should also invest on information. What I call what we call information therapy. That investing on bringing all these stakeholders, working with organisations like us and supporting us, that how we can make these programmes more regulation and more widen reachable to the all-time of stakeholders connecting and providing. So as you mentioned. A lot of cases where generic medicines are not so like impactful then.

So there is a big question mark on the efficacy, because there was a study also that only 2% of the generic medicines have undergone efficacy trials, and validating the pricing is very less generally cheaper. Again, that’s the same formula which comes up cheap. It is not always good. And even cost. The expensive is also not always good. But this is a mechanism government is trying to extend them to work on the certification of these producers so that they come out with quality medicine, but that will take time. That’s why there is a category called branded channels. So that is supported by the number of brands. And these are the generics which are more widely popular, more more widely available. But the pharma who is producing it takes the responsibility of the brand. So if anything goes wrong with the medicine and the efficacy is poor, you know whom to catch hold. So that’s what it’s called branded generics, which are the feature.

My only message is that let’s all be aware of all the things happening around us and look at the credible information. And also be aware of health and wellness. Wellness is more important than health care. I was in today’s scenario for everybody, and if we’d get somebody like one of the talks I was giving, I told very clearly that even the first of all, on the on the funny doctors in the MBBS courses, the information on providing should be made a curriculum and every doctor has to get into information providing public health education. So they should be trained for public health education. Then they should go out and they should not only just start going and doing their practice. The patient is patient and is patient. And that is one thing. And on the school side, from standard six seven year, the health and wellness curriculum should be inbuilt in the courses. They should start more reading about diet, nutrition right food right lifestyle and that should be made a part of the curriculum. They should give exams under those. So these two things will be brought on as a policy will make a change in the society.