There is an exponential growth of scientific knowledge in radiology which needs to be explored

Dr Mohanan K, Professor and HOD of Radio diagnosis, Govt Medical College, Thrissur, Kerala, has been recently elected as the 74th President of IRIA. He is the first president from Kerala and has a strong agenda for change in the Indian radiology sector

Congratulations for becoming the new President of IRIA. I would like to know your vision for the upliftment of the radiology sector in India.

Thank you! India, being the second largest country has an immense scope for the radiology sector to flourish. India has a large number of radiologist as compared to many countries in the world. 50 per cent of our radiologists are young and so the scope for further advancements and development increases manifold. Also, considering that 50 per cent of our country’s population is below 40 years, I feel the sector is certainly poised for growth.

We are at par with any country in the world with regards to technology, competence and efficiency. If you take any country from the world map, you will see that Indian radiologists are excelling in their work. Such excellence can be applied here as well.

As an association, we will work for the promotion and progress of the radiologists in India. Moreover, there is an exponential growth of scientific knowledge which still needs to be explored in this field. However, institutions and colleges cannot cope up with the growing scientific knowledge. Therefore, the association has plans introduce many education programmes, workshop and conferences to spread more knowledge.

I am a teacher, so I will always give more preference to learning and research.

Tell us about the new RAKSHA campaign that you have launched.

I come from Kerala where the number of females are high and we do believe in empowering our girls. And my personal agenda is to make India just like Kerala. Therefore, we decided to launch the RAKSHA programme, a nationwide initiative to save the girl child. The campaign was inaugurated by Amitabh Bachchan who has extended his support to the cause. He has promised that he would advocate for this campaign and will help us in every way to make this programme successful. The two main agenda under this programme is to pledge for not doing foetal selection and track down culprits who are doing this. We as an association have also found that a lot of foetal selection is done by non-qualified people for earning money and we will be closing working with police forces to track them down. I have taken a person responsibility on this front.

What are the efforts taken by you so far to improve radiation safety?

We have met the chairperson of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and launched the Radiation Safety Awareness programme. We have requested him to not issue license to anyone who do not follow the radiation safety mechanism. Today, anyone can purchase a radiology equipment in India. There is no norm that one needs to be a qualified radiologist to start this service. Even an Ayurvedic doctor can purchase radiology equipment, such is the state today. We have therefore requested the chairman to not allow this at least for high-end radiology equipment such as CT, MRI, PET_CT etc.

So what about the Clinical Establishments Act?

We the clinical establishment act is only passed by the Centre and not the states. However, it does have such provision that only a qualified radiologist needs to purchase and start a radiology centre.

What will you do to promote research in India?

Well, I completely believe that India needs research focussed on Indians and not the people living abroad. We are going to raise funds for research and we will have multi-centric studies.

The number of radiologist in India is less in comparison to the demand of our population. What will the association do to increase the number of radiologists?

We are in talks with the government to sanction more number of PG seats for radiology and we hope that soon we will hear some good news on that front too.

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