Challenges in Public Healthcare system in India

Better INDIA with Better HEALTH

Vidhya.V, Professor, SIMS

 

INTRODUCTION

Healthcare sector is growing in a rapid pace globally and it is one of the largest sectors in India. Healthcare constitutes of Hospitals, Medical devices, Pharmaceutics, Telemedicine, Medical tourism, Healthcare IT, Health Insurance and Public Health. The sector is in rising pace as its market is expected to reach 322 billion dollars by 2022 due to rise in income, health awareness, life style diseases and increasing market growth of Insurance industry. The Industry has both public and private players who contribute to the rising stage of health care. The private players are those who cater the needs of secondary and tertiary care to the public. The Government i.e public healthcare system focuses on rendering basic health facilities in the form of public health centres (PHC’s).

India’s public health systems is lacking behind the growth of the healthcare industry. The share of the central government has been steadily declining over the past few years on Public expenditure towards health. To match with this context Central government has initiated the launch of Ayushman Bharat, meaning Long Life India. This initiative will cater insurance needs for nearly 500 million people of India. This sounds to be great initiative that’s why it’s been called as the “world’s biggest healthcare programme”

The Government initiatives to promote public health are:

1. To increase healthcare spending by 3 percent of GDP in 2022
2. Government of India established AIIMS at Manethi on February 2019 to cater the healthcare needs in Haryana at a cost of Rs. 1299 crore.
3. Union cabinet approved to set up a National Nutrition Mission with a budget of Rs. 9,046 crore in India to monitor the nutrition related interventions in the country.
4. Government of India has launched Mission Indradhanush to improve the coverage of immunisation in the country.
5. Till July 2019 nearly 125.7million families were enrolled in Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna
6. The number of medical colleges built in India is increased to 528 in February 2019

Still in India we need to develop in many areas of Public health like sanitation, hygiene, biomedical waste management and so on. The Swachh Bharath mission or Clean India movement has contributed to some extent by reducing spread of communicable diseases in India. Though we find many steps to improve the public health still we find it difficult in fighting against new communicable diseases that has emerged naturally such as like latest pandemic outbreak COVID 19. We can find everywhere it is lock down and the spread of the virus is not yet controlled. This shows where we lack and where we need to concentrate. India has taken very rapid measure to control the pandemic and still we are fighting against it.

Road ahead:

In the next ten years a lot to be changed in India. The public should trust the public health systems in India and join with Government to support the health care programmes. All government PHC’s should be maintained properly so that rural and urban people can trust on the PHC’s. In urban areas people are afraid to go to government hospitals due to poor sanitation and hygiene problems. Now the government can do a clear roadmap to enhance budgetary spending on healthcare must be increased to 5%-7% of GDP. It is not just the public healthcare system to be strengthened but to strengthen the link between health insurance, healthcare providers and the public also. Let’s hope for better India with better health.