In Context
Recently ,it has been noticed that Healthcare in India is ailing.
Health System in India
- Healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors, both in terms of revenue and employment.
- The Indian healthcare sector is growing at a brisk pace due to its strengthening coverage, services and increasing expenditure by public as well private players.
- India’s healthcare delivery system is categorised into two major components public and private.
- The government, i.e. public healthcare system, comprises limited secondary and tertiary care institutions in key cities and focuses on providing basic healthcare facilities in the form of primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in rural areas.
- The private sector provides a majority of secondary, tertiary, and quaternary care institutions with major concentration in metros and tier-I and tier-II cities.
Potential
Government Initiatives
- In the Union Budget 2022-23:Rs. 86,200.65 crore (US$ 11.28 billion) was allocated to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
- Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) was allocated Rs. 10,000 crore (US$ 1.31 billion)Human Resources for Health and Medical Education was allotted Rs. 7,500 crore (US$ 982.91 million).
- The National Health Mission was allotted Rs. 37,000 crore (US$ 4.84 billion).
- Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) was allotted Rs. 6,412 crore (US$ 840.32 million).
- In November 2021, the Government of India, the Government of Meghalaya and the World Bank signed a US$ 40-million health project for the state of Meghalaya.
- In September 2021, Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.
- The mission will connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country with each other. Under this, every citizen will now get a digital health ID and their health record will be digitally protected.
- The Ministry of Health has issued guidelines to states to establish a public health cadre.
Issues /Challenges
- India’s healthcare system has been battling various issues, including the low number of institutions and less-than-adequate human resources .
- India has been struggling with deficient infrastructure in the form of lack of well-equipped medical institutes for quite a while now.
- Shortage of efficient and trained manpower and The situation remains worrisome in rural areas.
- Even prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare facilities had been feeling the strain due to unmanageable patient-load.
- High out-of-pocket expenditure remains a stress factor.
Conclusion and Way Forward
- There is an urgency to focus on all the three levels of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare, it is imperative that the government look towards improving primary health care as a public good.
- The lesson emerging most unequivocally from the pandemic experience is that if India does not want a repeat of the immeasurable suffering and the social and economic loss, we need to make public health a central focus.
- There is also a need to declutter policy dialogue and provide clarity to the nomenclatures.
- India needs to move beyond the doctor-led system and paramedicalise several functions.
