A Healthy Nation is a Wealthy Nation

Context: The Covid-19 crisis and its direct fallout on people’s lives have presented us the opportunity to realign our development policies and reprioritise the health sector.

Challenges to the Health sector in India:

• Impact of COVID on poverty: According to the United Nations, an additional 207 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030.
• Slow digitisation: Healthcare has been way behind other sectors such as banking, tourism, manufacturing and retail.

Significant Government Steps to Tackle COVID:

• Social protection initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat, have been established by India to save the most vulnerable families from poverty, owing to catastrophic healthcare expenditure. 
• Whole-of-society disaster management plan: India, eventually, managed to strengthen its testing capabilities, hospital bed strength and intensive care units (ICUs) with ventilators capacity.
• Digital technologies were deployed: for checking symptoms online, taking consultations virtually and using healthcare mobile apps.
• Towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC): Efforts are on track to bring non-poor and missing middle under UHC by building a more unified health system enabling access to safe, timely affordable care.

Way Forward:

• Timely interventions on the supply side will ensure that the health system is accessible to everyone, at all times and in all circumstance, building large, efficient and responsive healthcare infrastructure.
• Health sector as an integrated whole:
  • Not only early identification of any new infection but also prompt contact tracing, efficient triaging of patients and ensuring timely secondary and tertiary hospitalisation.
  • Medical assistance in post-recovery, especially lifestyle management of individuals with comorbidities, are also needed.
• Implementation of National Digital Health Mission shall address the challenges of access, affordability and quality of care, also reducing costs and improving health outcomes.
  • Data and mobile telephony shall be leveraged in enabling mass inoculation and contribute towards protecting citizens’ health and longevity.

Conclusion: Covid-19 crisis and its direct fallout on people’s lives have presented the opportunity to realign development policies and reprioritise the health sector at its tipping point.