Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Ensure proper healthcare for the poor' that was published in Newsband

Ensure proper healthcare for the poor

There are private hospitals which refuse to treat poor patients in spite of the fact that it is the social obligation of healthcare providers to treat the poor especially in emergency cases.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that government accounts for only one-third of India’s healthcare spend — well below what is desirable. As a result, we have a situation in which the private sector accounts for a significant part of healthcare services. Given the low penetration of health insurance, about 86 per cent of expenditure on health comes out of people’s pockets. This strengthens the case for private hospitals to dedicate a part of their services to those who cannot afford treatment.

Ensuring healthy life style and curbing health expenditures are one of the main aspects of maintaining the population safe both on health as well as financial constraints.

Since the health charges are less in private clinics, people don't bother to get themselves covered under valid health insurance. Due to this the big private hospitals take advantage when the patient is encountered with chronic or other disease which requires much amount of time to be cured.

In India health care for the poor and the marginalised sections of the society is the last priority of the Government. The Government hospitals are deficient in many things. Most of them are hospitals with no doctors, not to speak of other essential facilities. The hospitals with better facilities seldom have a standard procedure for charging fees and the Government is not taking any measures to streamline them. The poor are always at the receiving end.

Social responsibility of hospitals must be monitored and special attention should be paid for healthcare of poor and down trodden. There is a great need for the Government to monitor and enforce "health services" so that the poor who cannot afford modern health facilities that are extremely costly - are able to benefit. We need to enact a Law on the lines of Right to Food, Education - a special Law that would mandatorily offer Health services to the poor. Often, we hear about "calls for donations" from public for some "costly" health service - such as Kidney transplant, dialysis etc for some poor needy people. Many good Samaritans offer monetary help. One wonders why Hospitals who perform such functions do not offer the services FREE - and instead pocket the donations from common public?

Imposing a compensatory fine on private hospitals for not treating the economically poor is a good idea since this can fetch justice to poor patients.