Docs have a moral responsibility, must behave with humanity: Murmu

New Delhi, Feb 26: Doctors have a moral responsibility and they must behave with humanity showing compassion, kindness and empathy, said President Droupadi Murmu on Monday.

She was speaking at the 107th Annual Day and Convocation Ceremony of Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) in New Delhi.

“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,” the President said.

“To be a good healthcare professional, it is also important to be a good person”.

She said that Gandhi Ji has also called knowledge without character and science without humanity as a sin.

“Therefore, their primary aim should not be to earn money, but ‘service before self’,” President Murmu added.

Hailing the new advancements in medical science, the President said it “is not limited to just treatment” and its “scope has become very wide”.

“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.

“But the problem of misuse of these technologies also remains,” said the President, while expressing confidence in the medical fraternity “to work with ethics and high values in their professional life and try to solve all the problems with the integrated approach of ‘one health’”.