‘Pillars of Kerala's public health’: Tharoor hails missionary hospitals, warns against corporate greed

Thrissur: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday spotlighted the enduring legacy of Kerala’s Christian missionary hospitals, crediting them alongside progressive state policies for shaping the state’s globally acclaimed healthcare model.

Delivering the Dr HS Adenwalla Memorial Oration on “Missionary Concept in Health Care in the Era of Corporate Presence” at Jubilee Mission Medical College in Thrissur, Tharoor said, “Kerala’s Catholic Church’s role in healthcare is not just history — it’s an evolving mission.”

He hailed missionary institutions for combining clinical excellence with compassion and community service, calling them “pillars of public health” that long predated government systems.

“They pioneered nursing education for women and reached tribal and coastal communities when official healthcare barely existed,” he said.

Citing the Jubilee Mission Hospital’s journey from a small dispensary founded by Fr Mathew Muringathery in 1951 to a 1,500-bed multi-specialty centre, Tharoor praised its founder-surgeon, Dr HS Adenwalla, for rejecting lucrative foreign offers to serve the poor in Thrissur. “It was the poor man’s hospital that never turned anyone away,” he recalled.

But Tharoor warned that healthcare now stands at a moral crossroads. “AI diagnostics and robotic surgeries are astonishing,” he said, “but for ordinary citizens, the deepest wound is not the disease — it’s the cost.”

Criticising the growing dominance of corporate priorities, Tharoor cautioned, “When the accounts department becomes more powerful than the medical department, something vital is lost.”

He called for a balance between corporate efficiency and missionary compassion, saying, “The challenge is not to reject corporate participation, but to ensure their resources serve equity as well as excellence.”

During the event, the Monsignor Mathew Muringathery Memorial National Healthcare and Missionary Award was conferred on Ajit Ronald Gurubachan Singh for his work in vaccination drives, TB eradication, and rural healthcare initiatives in Odisha and Chhattisgarh.