Government
should strengthen public health system
India can ill-afford the neglect of the public
healthcare sector. Universal healthcare can be provided merely through
insurance coverage for hospitalisation.
The finance minister, in the last full budget
of the present government, focused on health. The budgetary
allocation for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is at ₹54,600 crore. This
is the minimum required for a country to provide essential health services.
The finance minister announced the National
Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), that he claimed would be the “world’s largest
government-funded healthcare programme” for 10 crore poor and vulnerable
families. This would provide publicly funded insurance coverage of ₹5 lakh per
family for hospitalisation.
For ensuring primary healthcare,₹1,200 crore
has been allocated for 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres that would provide
“comprehensive health care,” including for non-communicable diseases, and
maternal and child health services, as well as free essential drugs and
diagnostic services.
The budgetary allocation for the National
Health Mission (NHM), of which the health and wellness centres will also be a
part, is at ₹30,634 crore,
This continued neglect of healthcare is despite
the severity of the health burden in the country, where more than one-third of
children up to five years of age suffer from malnutrition and where the burden
of non-communicable and infectious diseases has only grown. There
are growing incidence of huge out-of-pocket health expenditures leading
families into utter financial distress bordering on penury. In India, 67% of all health expenditure
remains OOPE
Dependence on the private sector, even for
those who can ill-afford it, has happened on account of the neglect of the
public healthcare sector. With the public healthcare centres suffering from
poor infrastructure, under-staffing, and lack of equipment and medicines, even
the poor have been left with no option but to turn to private healthcare. The
existing healthcare system, based as it is largely on private for-profit
provision, puts profits well above the health and well-being of the Indian
people.
India’s focus must be on strengthening public
health systems at all levels by investing in better infrastructure as well as
human resources.
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