Jammu & Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Wednesday, 26 August called on the nation to move beyond tertiary healthcare and build a full-scale quaternary treatment infrastructure accessible to every citizen, regardless of income or geography. Speaking at the Quaternary Healthcare & Research Summit in Srinagar, Sinha described the event as a turning point in both J&K's and India's broader healthcare journey.

The Gap That Sparked the Call

Sinha traced the urgency to a personal experience during the 'Back to Village' programme in 2020, when he visited Akhnoor and met doctors who flagged the absence of modern diagnostic equipment for rare diseases. That interaction, he said, exposed a stark divide between the care available in small district hospitals and what patients actually need. 'Bridging this gap is a national priority,' he told the gathering.

India's Healthcare Progress Under Review

The L-G cited a series of figures to illustrate how far India has come under Prime Minister Narendra Modi: free treatment now covers more than 56 crore citizens, annual vaccination campaigns reach 7 crore children, and the e-Sanjeevani telemedicine platform has served 37 crore people. On infrastructure, he pointed to 23 AIIMS and 2,045 medical colleges nationwide. Jammu & Kashmir alone now has 2 AIIMS, 10 medical colleges, 2 State Cancer Institutes, a Bone and Joint Hospital, a Paediatric Hospital, 52 nursing colleges, 23 paramedical colleges, and 5 pharmacy colleges.

'These figures show that India has succeeded in elevating primary, secondary and tertiary care. But the time has come to scale up tertiary hospitals into quaternary centres,' Sinha said.

What Quaternary Care Must Include

Sinha urged hospitals to evolve into research institutions capable of performing organ transplantation, robotic and precision surgery, advanced genomics, cellular therapies, and AI-supported diagnostics. He called on them to earmark annual budgets for specialised infrastructure — including modern operating theatres and proton-beam therapy facilities. He also proposed a dedicated corridor linking district hospitals and tertiary centres directly with quaternary-care institutions, integrated with telemedicine and AI-enabled diagnostic tools.

Expanded fellowship and training in organ transplantation, oncology, genomics, and critical care were among the specific measures he recommended. Private hospitals and research centres were explicitly asked to join the effort.

A Mission for Himalayan States and Beyond

The L-G proposed a unified mission bringing together Himalayan states, Jammu & Kashmir, universities, hospitals, private institutions, and innovators to advance biomedical research and address funding constraints. 'We must develop new inventions ourselves instead of importing innovation from abroad,' he said. He framed hospitals as strategic national assets requiring the same commitment to preservation and development as any other critical infrastructure.

'We must create a robust quaternary-care framework that guarantees equal access to the son of a farmer and to a millionaire living in a city,' Sinha said, underlining that advanced care must cease to be a metropolitan privilege. 'Quaternary care should not be a privilege reserved for the economically rich section of society. It must become a right of citizenship and a guarantee of the nation.'

What Comes Next

No formal timeline or budgetary outlay was announced at the summit, but Sinha's call for private-sector cooperation and a Himalayan-states coalition signals that institutional groundwork is expected to follow. The push comes as India's health policy debate increasingly shifts from access to quality — and from primary care to cutting-edge intervention at the district level.