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Lucknow, Jan 8
 patient in distress in a remote village in Tripura or faraway island in the Andaman now need not worry about having the best cardiologist or neurosurgeon around.
Help is to come from the sky where a national satellite will aid the best doctors examine patients in remote villages and prescribe treatment.
A national-level telemedicine programme using the INSAT series is to go on the operational mode, says Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman, K. Kasturirangan.
Five hospitals in three states and the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been identified in the first phase of the programme.
The Sundari district hospital at Tripura will be connected through satellite with the Rabindranath Tagore Institute of Cardiac Studies in Kolkata and the Avagonda Hospital in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh will be linked to Apollo Hospital, Chennai.
In Karnataka, two hospitals - the Chamrajnagar district hospital in Mysore and the SVYM Hospital in Kanchanahalli - will be connected with the Navarathna Hrudayalaya, Bangalore.
In Andamans where 50 percent of the patients are now airlifted to Chennai, seven islands will be connected to the central hospital in the capital, Port Blair, which will in turn be linked to Chennai or Bangalore. Telemedicine idea works through video conference between doctors sittings at a referral hospital and specialists at reputed hospitals, says Dr. Kasturirangan, who was here to present a paper education and health care : bridging the access divide at the five-day 89 th Indian Science Congress that concluded here.
The doctors at the referral hospitals will also transmit through satellite the data of examinations of the patient to the specialists sitting thousands of kilometers away, he says. "If required the specialist doctors can talk to the patient as well through satellite."
A satellite education programme managed by ISRO in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh has achieved 'fantastic' results. Started in November, 1996 the programme telecast for two hours every evening has changed the lives of the villagers.
"One of the major impacts have been reducing alcoholism among villagers," says the ISRO chief, who has been elected general-president of the next year's Science Congress at Bangalore.
Encouraged by the success of the Jhabra experiment, the government now wants to extend it to other states. A 'gramsat' programme is examined by the Centre.
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