Breathing A New Life Into The Indian Healthcare System

On the occasion of World Health Day on April 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that his Government is leaving no stone unturned in providing quality healthcare that is accessible and affordable. Making an effort in this direction, the Health Ministry under the administrative acumen of the Health Secretary, CK Mishra, is working on a war footing to galvanise the sluggish healthcare system of India to deliver affordable health and well-being to the last man in the row. However, the real challenge in the path for Universal Health Coverage lies in effective implementation which calls for cementing consensus between State Governments and the Centre. In a candid conversation with Bureaucracy Today, Union Health Secretary Mishra speaks about the increasing coordination between the Centre and the States in the recent times and also sheds light on other issues like making generic medicines available to people and the regulation of the private healthcare sector which are of top priority for his Ministry.

- Soma Chakraborty

Over the years, successive Governments at the Centre have concentrated on preventive healthcare in India. Though the approach has seen a mixed bag of success with the eradication of diseases like smallpox and polio from the country, it has been unable to make much headway in creating a universal healthcare system for all citizens. This has resulted in the private sector becoming the dominant healthcare provider in India which has led many households to incur catastrophic health expenditure which threatens their capacity to maintain a basic standard of living. However, things seem to be changing now with the Health Ministry working on a strategy to make affordable healthcare universal.

“There are two things which are critical on my mind and we are working on them right now. One is how do we access universal healthcare. So far the Government has been able to provide healthcare to people in a vertical manner. For example, we go in for malaria treatment at one place but we choose another place for TB treatment. The Health Ministry is currently working on how to integrate healthcare at the sub-centre level. The critical step is to create a platform where integrated healthcare delivery is available. The second critical issue that is playing on my mind is that of reducing the cost of treatment,” Health Secretary CK Mishra tells Bureaucracy Today.

Making headway in this regard, the Ministry recently released the National Health Policy 2017 which proposes free drugs, free diagnostics and free emergency care services in all public hospitals. The policy endorses that the public hospitals would provide universal access to a progressively wide array of free drugs and diagnostics with suitable leeway to the States to suit their context.