Medvarsity & Academy of Family Physicians of India ( AFPI) present a live and interactive session on " Importance of family medicine during and post covid" by Dr. Raman Kumar, President of Academy of Family Physicians of India ( AFPI) and President, World Organisation of Family Doctors, South Asia Region.

Family medicine is the backbone of the healthcare delivery system says Dr Raman Kumar.


The role of family medicine and family physicians has already been recognised globally after the second world war. If you look at UK where the NHS and similar trends have evolved in the US, where family physicians provide services to the community and they are covering almost 90 percent of their needs. In all of Western Europe, family medicine is the backbone of the whole medical education as well as the healthcare delivery system.

Now, this trend is spreading across all the global regions and we see strong family physicians movement in the Middle East, African countries, Latin American countries and even in India, we see that it is happening now and it has been largely accepted by the policymakers that we need family physician system over here also. If you look at the trends, after the 70s and 80s, the role of general practitioners and family physicians was on the decline


In India, we have largely seen the trend of hospitals and tertiary care development, but gradually both from the public and policymakers' perspective, we see there is a huge need because the country has a population of around 1.3 billion.

We see a change in how the family physicians' position has improved over the past decade. Most of the South Asian countries now have faculty position for family physicians at the universities. It is encouraging to see how family physicians are playing an important role in policymaking, education, and healthcare delivery system.