Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Strengthen Government Hospitals' that was published in Newsband

Strengthen Government Hospitals

Two hospitals charged Rs 6 lakh for a 22-day dengue treatment and Rs15.6 lakh for a 15-day dengue treatment respectively. This is India’s dismal health service situation. A public health service is on the brink of collapse while the private sector is growing aggressively, A majority of Indians face financial disaster in the case of hospitalisation. Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on medical services is continuing to impoverish the poor, especially in rural India. The resource crunch in public health services leads even the very poor to prefer private hospitals.

As per survey, 61% rural and 69% city patients preferred the private hospitals to public ones. An unheeding government continues to unburden itself of responsibilities in favour of the private sector. If the state governments insist on the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 being implemented, many of the malpractices, financial and otherwise, by private hospitals can be addressed.

From the centre’s imposition of a price cap on coronary stents, private hospitals have mastered the art of finding loopholes. Patients undergoing angioplasties have complained that costs have remained the same despite the cap.

The public health services are weak and public suffering and anger are growing. India has only a little over one million allopathic doctors to cover a population of 1.3 billion. Of the one million, approximately 10% work in the public health sector. The numerical strength of nurses and health workers is also inadequate. Medical education system that does not sensitise students to the needs of a poor country,

The government needs to act urgently. What is needed is political will to ensure that poor patients and their families are not at the mercy of greedy private health providers. Education and healthcare, the two most relevant areas are increasingly swallowed by private sector. Laws are broken daily or circumvented which is worse than breaking it. One wonders if our democracy is really working.

Technical and medical education face challenges. So an engineer doesn't really have a feel why and how his or her skills are needed by society, a doctor doesn't see his or her success in terms of the difficulty of the case she has handled.

Healthcare system in India is not only poor but also skewed towards the rich and urban areas. Private hospital cater to the wealthy and have the necessary equipment to deal with diagnosis and treatment of patients. But government hospitals neither have sufficient infrastructure as well as qualified doctors to treat patients. Many remote villages do not have proper access to hospitals. Hence, to stop private hospitals from mushrooming, public and government hospitals must be strengthened with good facilities and more financial assistance