{"id":1089,"date":"2005-10-17T08:50:52","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T08:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/reaching-out-1.html"},"modified":"2005-10-17T08:50:52","modified_gmt":"2005-10-17T08:50:52","slug":"reaching-out-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/reaching-out-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Reaching out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indian health minister acknowledges a problem:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

AsiaNews<\/em> interviewed Fr Alex Vadakumthala, secretary of the Health Commission of the Bishops\u2019 Conference, about the matter. He said: \u201cThe commitment of Catholics is sincerely appreciated by the government. The minister studied in a Christian school, so he knows us well.\u201d This commitment is \u201cespecially developed in four southern states: Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andra Pradesh. The overall level of health services here is high, not least because of our commitment in the educational, health and social sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fr Vadakumthala continued: \u201cWe have nearly 600 Sisters who are doctors and in India this is unique. The Sisters work in 95% of villages which otherwise would not have any provision of medical services because it is not cost-effective to open clinics or dispensaries and so not even private enterprises set up in these places. Nearly all doctors go to cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Indian government has launched a programme called Rural Health Mission in which they ask for the collaboration of the Church to improve health services in villages. We have said very clearly that we intend to collaborate with the government and non-governmental organizations only if Catholic morals and ethics are respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Indian government \u201cknows that health development and education projects in the country would improve substantially with the help of the Catholic church and it wants to collaborate to upgrade services\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indian health minister acknowledges a problem: AsiaNews interviewed Fr Alex Vadakumthala, secretary of the Health Commission of the Bishops\u2019 Conference, about the matter. He said: \u201cThe commitment of Catholics is sincerely appreciated by the government. The minister studied in a Christian school, so he knows us well.\u201d This commitment is \u201cespecially developed in four southern…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nReaching out - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/reaching-out-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reaching out - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Indian health minister acknowledges a problem: AsiaNews interviewed Fr Alex Vadakumthala, secretary of the Health Commission of the Bishops\u2019 Conference, about the matter. 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He said: \u201cThe commitment of Catholics is sincerely appreciated by the government. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}