Healthcare

Public Healthcare Issues

-         Lesser people opting for public healthcare facilities from 6% to 68% in last 1 decade have opted for prvt sector leading to

a.     More people going under poverty every year for medical expenses nearly 23% due to out of pocket expenditures.

b.    Expensive tertiary healthcare facilities cropping up in Urban areas – nontransparent + many unethical practices eg: Kidney rackets etc.

c.     Rural Urban Migration for treatment of diseases

-         In last 20 yrs GDP spending on Healthcare has been increased only 1.1% to 1.4%, while China spends 3% & US 8.3% = (poor suffering the most)

-         Indias public Healthcare policy has worked well in areas like reducing maternal & Infant mortality, eradicating polio but failed to combat Tuberculosis & non-communicable diseases.

-         Solutn: a. Improving public health Infrastructure esp upgrading nurses skills (linking it to skill India) in Rural areas.

b. Ethical treatment should be given to patients in Public hospitals.

c. Increasing budgetary allocations on healthcare + ppp models + R&D.

d. Proper instructions of laws to medical practitioners to avoid “blame games”.

e. An affordable healthcare legislation like US or Universal Healthcare on lines of Right to Food Act.

- There is gradual weaking of National Health Mission (NHM) which focused on public health Infrastucture other than tertiary sector esp prog for prevention of vector bourne diseases & TB.

- Allocations for “ Family Welfare Scheme” also reduced

- Budget is primarly focused on promoting, procuring and distributing contraceptives + other materials for Information, education & communication.

= but, death of women during private stearlization camp in Chattisgarh – IEC without proper Infra is nothing

-         Tertiary care sector is growing rapidly at cost of primary and secondary healthcare of India.

-         Alleged programmes like water sanitation, ICDS & MNREGS also neglected.

-         Doctors/ lakh populatn is 45 while desirable is 85 & auxillary nurse and midwives (ANM’s) available is only 75 per lakh population whereas the desirable number is 255.

Government initiatives wrt rising healthcare costs :

-         Increase spending on public health : Government is trying to increase public expenditure on health from current level of 1.2%of GDP to 2.5% by 2017 and to 3% by 2022.

-         Rashtriya swasthya bhima yojana , a smartcard based cashless health insurance scheme has been modified and transferred to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare from Ministry of Labour.

-         Greater access has been created to medicines, vaccines and technology through adequate price controls and price regulation, especially on essential drugs.

-         Centre is trying to set up National Health Regulatory and Development Authority as a nodal agency to supervise + redress over public health sector in India.