Honorable Chief Guest – Respected Dr APJ Abdul
Kalam Sir; Worthy Guest of Honor Dr Dilip Mahalanabis, Esteemed office
bearers of Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) on the Dias – Executive
Board members, Office bearers of different state and city branches,
Distinguished guests of the evening – including President of American
Academy of Pediatrics Dr Thomas McInerny, National Neonatology Forum
President-elect Dr Ajay Gambhir, Respected Past presidents of IAP,
Honorable teachers of Pediatrics, Dearest members of the Academy, Guests
from SAARC countries, Dear delegates and PG students, Friends from
Media, Ladies and gentlemen: It is my profound privilege to welcome you
all to this 50th Conference
of Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) – The Golden Jubilee PEDICON.
Indian Academy of Pediatrics is relentlessly working
for the children of this nation for last 50 years and I am proud to say
it has contributed immensely to bring down the infant mortality rate of
the country from 144 in the year of its inception to only 44 per 1000
live births after a long struggle. This is a momentous and proud
occasion for all of us and I am thankful to you all for being here to
share this joy and happiness. I take the privilege of welcoming and
honoring the revered guests of the evening Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr
Dilip Mahalanabis, on behalf of more than 20,000 members of Indian
Academy of Pediatrics. Let us all give them a big hand.
Friends, at the outset, I would love to express my
deepest gratitude to every member of IAP for reposing faith in me by
electing me to the highest post of the Academy in its Golden Jubilee
Year. This has given me a chance to march towards my dreams for children
of India – which I have been cherishing since last 25 years.
I pay my thanks to almighty to award me an
opportunity to address Honorable Bharat Ratna Shri APJ Abdul
Kalam sir an institution in himself and affectionately known as "the
people’s president" or "missile man of India." You just cannot guess my
pleasure of occupying a seat next to a man who has more national and
international awards than counting the ridges you have in fingers of
your both hands. Amazingly, his journey is still on. Friends – stirred
by presence of Dr Kalam Sir – I appeal you all that let us emerge as the
strongest partner of Government of India in all child related programs
and policies. Let us all strive hard to behave like a true advocate of
child population – let Indian children recognize us as their own body –
dedicated to their welfare, ensuring them justice and safe, quality
life. Remember, that by definition, child means 0-18 years of age – so
we have to take care of every child from birth till the end of
adolescent period.
What Have We Achieved So Far?
We are celebrating our golden jubilee – the small
plant roped in 1963 by our 169 seniors from the entire country under
guidance of "Father of Indian Pediatrics" Dr George Coelho.Today
it is a full grown very healthy tree carrying 21,000 leaves, 328 small
branches, 42 strong (state) branches and three offshoots – like a Banyan
tree. Sir, we are always focussed on our goals. We have contributed our
bit in bringing zero polio status to India, promoting ORS and zinc,
strengthening routine immunization, working for child rights, caring for
the newborn and ensuring first effective breath for every newborn
through NRP FGM Project, and caring for adolescent health.There has been
progress in overall indicators: IMR is down, child survival is up,
literacy rates have improved and school dropout rates have fallen. We
have always been surging ahead for providing updated knowledge and
skills to our fellow members who are serving deep in inaccessible areas.
However, still the decline in neonatal mortality rate (NMR) is very slow
and early NMR is almost stagnant. Though progress has been made but it
is distributed unequally.
Sir, now I would like to have your attention to peep
into some of our future plans.
IAP Action Plan 2013
IAP, as a community of pediatricians, has been, and
will continue its three pronged strategy of targeting child health care:
• Firstly to, target the community as a whole. To
sensitize them towards the growing and changing needs of the
children of today;
• Secondly we shall be targeting the children
directly; and
• Lastly, we shall continue to target our fellow
pediatricians by updating them with the recent researches and
motivating them to settle for nothing but the best for the children.
This has been the motive of year 2013 Action Plan.
Considering success stories and still deficient areas, IAP has set
certain targets for us through various national programs. We may best
have a bird’s eye view of them:
1. IAP Mission Uday: For Better Child Survival
It is demoralizing to note that nearly 76 lac
children are likely to die globally this year before they reach their
5th birthday, and out of them 17 lac are estimated to be contributed by
India alone. Sadly, most of these deaths are due to causes that are
preventable.With your help, IAP wishes to send a passionate message to
world leaders:
No child should die from preventable causes, and we
must give every child the best possible start in life, bring equity and
quality in Child Care, and above all now the time has reached when we
should start talking about- not only child survival but quality of life
and development.
Friends, we have enough manpower, technical
resources, vision and think tanks.We wish to hit targets in prescribed
time frame of 3 years for Mission Uday. I appeal to all concerned
government offices and departments, all global and local NGOs and all
individuals to join us financially and logistically to succeed in this
pious mission.
2. IAP Mission Kishore Uday
With more than one-third of its population below 18
years, India has the largest young population in the world. Adolescent
health could not get due recognition because of a single belief which is
not correct to a large extent…that this age is the healthiest age
forgetting that mental and psychological issues are also part of human
health. They might be healthy organically but data related to suicide,
depression and anxiety, AIDS, obesity, sex abuse, drug abuse, school
drop outs, early marriages, drunken driving, and road accidents are
alarming and require to be worked on. Damini taught us many
lessons – we will have to protect and nurture our adolescents in such a
way that they do not harm themselves and let nobody harm them. Mission "Kishore
Uday" is aimed at that.
3. Preventing Neonatal Deaths–IAP NRP-FGM
(Neonatal Resuscitation Program - First Golden Minute)
It is our prestigious project that addresses neonatal
care both basic and advanced. I am happy to say that today this project
has assumed to be the biggest child survival project of world. World
class Advanced NRP training has been developed by the team NRP India –
and we are soon going to have its kick start in this year. Basic NRP
will continue but with more vigor and enthusiasm. The contributions
especially of Dr Naveen Thacker, Dr Panna Choudhary and Dr Vineet Saxena
in bringing it to its present stature deserve mention.
4. Other Programs
We are going to launch 4 other community awareness
programs, namely:Anemia control and Prevention – to prevent anemia; BLS
for health care personnel and mass awareness – making Basic Life Support
– the CPR more popular; Media Training – to equip us for dealing media
appropriately; and Help Line – for answering the queries of parents and
teens. For our Fellow Members, we will be launching the following
programs:
a) ACPP (Acute Care Management for Practicing
Pediatricians) – for updating skills in acute care management of
level II care;
b) GEM – to teach beyond PALS and emergencies
in office practice;
c) IAP TOUCH (Training of Untrained Child
Health workers) – For paramedics;
d) Info Vac – For updating knowledge and
answering queries of members of academy immediately;
e) Doctors Indemnity – professional insurance
scheme for Pediatricians;
f) Making e-learning and telemedicine
possible; and
g) Child India – our new e-news
bulletin – another dream project – I am so happy that the first
issue is being released today.
Apart from these I am also committed to continue all
those projects which have been widely acclaimed by the members – we
intend to bring a new flavor to them.
I welcome you all for the Golden Jubilee Dream Run
– scheduled tomorrow – with a slogan to Prevent Teen Suicide in
world’s Teen Suicide Capital West Bengal – carries a special meaning.
We intend to organize a big Candle march on India
Gate, Delhi – for bringing awareness on child Survival on children’s day
the November 14
2013.
We also intend to organize Pneumonia workshops in
different cities.
We intend to develop more Public Private Models –
started in Gurgaon Pedicon by Dr MP Jain.
IDSurv will be strengthened and will make it
mandatory for each member to register cases in it.
Under Golden Jubilee Celebrations we have many
programs for various branches. Government of India has agreed to get a
Postal Stamp released in February.
We have brought certain changes in Pedicon this year
– democratic selection of speakers, one speaker – one session, free
registration for faculty members of main conference, un-interfering
science in Pedicon, Names of halls – on the name of senior members of
IAP from each zone. This could not have been possible without the
untiring efforts of Dr Piyush Gupta coupled with our HSG Dr Sailesh
Gupta and Pedicon team headed by Dr R Kundu and Dr Jaydeep Choudhury.
I am sure, you will appreciate the new web management
in IAP – new structure and design of our new website – loaded with
plethora of feature – it is already on from today.
We intend to have frequent audio and video
conferencing among OB and EB members from this year. We will also take
necessary steps to reduce office expenditure.
Every office bearer and member of the Committee of
Immunization shall abide by code of conduct and will sign a document of
conflict of interest.
I am committed to make - Awesome the sponsor free,
banquet free Pedicons more popular and spread it to all zones.