President Droupadi Murmu on Monday said medical science at present is not limited to just treatment and that its scope has become very wide.

Addressing the 107th Annual Day and convocation ceremony of Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), she said, “The gap between the physical, digital and biological realms is shrinking due to the 4th Industrial Revolution. New experiments being done in synthetic biology and new techniques like CRISPR gene editing are proving helpful in finding solutions to problems that have persisted for centuries.”

Pointing out that the problem of misuse of these technologies also remains, the President expressed confidence that the medical fraternity will work in accordance with ethics and high values in their professional life and try to solve all the problems with the integrated approach of ‘one health’.

“People consider doctors as God. Doctors should understand this moral responsibility and behave accordingly. They will be truly successful doctors or nurses only if they have professional competence as well as human values like compassion, kindness and empathy,” she said.

Murmu further said to be a good healthcare professional, it is also important to be a good person.

The primary aim should not be to earn money, but ‘service before self’, she added.

The President was happy to note that LHMC has been registered as an Organ Transplant Retrieval Centre. LHMC has started the Comprehensive Antibiotic Stewardship Program to resolve the problem of antimicrobial resistance. LHMC is also working on Blood Bag Delivery under the iDrone Initiative in collaboration with other institutes.

Besides this, LHMC, in collaboration with the Government of Norway, has established the National Human Milk Bank and Lactation Counseling Center ‘Vatsalya – Matri Amrit Kosh’.

She expressed confidence that this centre will prove helpful in creating awareness about breastfeeding and reducing infant mortality rates.

Union Minister of State for Health Bharti Pravin Pawar and Director of LHMC Dr Subhash Giri, among the dignitaries, were also present on the occasion.