PLUGGING THE GAP IN INDIAN HEALTH CARE SECTOR

Context: This article highlights India’s inadequate provision and availability of healthcare services and suggests measures for making India a true welfare state.

Issues in Indian health care sector:

• Government apathy: in developing a welfare state (visible from lack of Hospitals, ICUs and Ventilators)
• Inadequate provision and availability of healthcare services: India lags behind its BRICS peers on the health and quality index (HAQ index)
• Low investment in public health spending: less than 1% of the country’s GDP, lower than some of its neighboring countries, Bhutan (2.5%), Sri Lanka (1.6%) and Nepal (1.1%) (National Health Profile 2018).

• India has only 0.53 beds available per 1,000 people, as against 0.87 in Bangladesh, 2.11 in Chile, 1.38 in Mexico, 4.34 in China, and 8.05 in Russia (OECD data, 2017).

• Differing capacities at Sub-national level: between highest-performing states and lowest-performing states. 

• E.g. Kerala and Goa scored more than 60 points, and Uttar Pradesh and Assam scored less than 40 points in subnational HAQ

• Poor resilience of the Indian health system

• Lack of Private participation in the health care sector: Private hospitals account for only around 10% of the workload but account for 62% of health infrastructure.

Way forward:

• Equal participation of the Private sector: to expand the outreach of healthcare services.

• Clearing out the pending dues owed to private hospitals for treating patients under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) and the Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS).

• Engaging civil societies, NGOs: at the grass-root level with a high degree of coordination with the state apparatus.
• Collaborative Federalism: by adopting to successful models by other states Example, Kerala has emerged as a successful model in health care