Treating Healthcare at its source

Context: India is one of the poorest spenders of its budget on healthcare. However, simply increasing the allocation towards healthcare is not a panacea to upgrade the poor state of Indian healthcare.

India’s Dismal Healthcare Spending :

•  Oxfam’s latest ‘Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2020’ report ranks India to be fourth worst in the world on its healthcare spending.

• India was the 13th lowest among 206 countries, incurring 3.5% of the total government expenditure towards health in 2017. – World Bank.

Steps to improve healthcare sector in India:

• Addressing acute shortage of healthcare workers: 
• Employing Cost-effective solutions: by bringing down the cost of medical education and liberalising rules related to induction of paramedical personnel.
• National Medical Commission(NMC) has the potential to make medical education affordable and accessible.
• It can allow smaller hospitals to become postgraduate institutions, and award diplomas to create intermediate doctors who are between a specialist and a general physician.
• It may grant a limited licence to certain mid-level practitioners to prescribe specified medicines in primary and preventive healthcare.
• NMC is empowered to regulate the fees in 50% seats in private colleges as well as deemed universities.
• Increasing pay of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) worker: from the current meagre pay of Rs 2000 a month, since they are the most basic and key components of the national rural health mission. 
• Strengthening the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM): that aims to provide a unique health identity to every citizen and link them together with electronic health records.
• Use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to identify disease trends and patterns in a community, streamline the required treatments and lower the cost, as well as widen the healthcare reach.
• Improving primary healthcare: Investing in upgrading the physical and technological infrastructure of rural healthcare facilities can help a great deal and can prevent overcrowding of secondary and tertiary hospitals.

Conclusion: Any increase should not be made without first reforming the ecosystem. India can well prove to the world that a poor country doesn’t necessarily need to have poor healthcare.