Healthcare and education should be integrated with the help of digitisation, informs Bhudeb Chakravarti, Honorary President, Centre for Development of Excellence, Client Principal, ThoughtWorks.
Education is an important factor which affects the social and economic development and has a profound impact on health too. Education helps to avail a lot of benefits at the individual level and community level.
Highlighting the need for a robust Primary Health Centre (PHC), Chakravarti said, “We provide consultancy services to various state governments at grass-root levels. Also, we are planning to initiate a healthcare wing as it requires a lot of attention and focus on PHCs, as these are the citizen’s primary contact with a health- providing entity.”
He also added that achieving positive health outcomes in today’s healthcare environment requires variety of factors like education and a combination of soft and hard skills.
“Healthcare at the primary level is not up to the mark. Most of the patients in towns and villages benefit from the ability to understand their health needs, follow or read instructions, advocate for themselves and their families, and communicate effectively with health providers. Frontline health workers should be educated and given a mobile helpline, so that it could connect doctors and patients.
Besides, state governments should come with a module to improve the PHCs. State governments mostly concentrate on posting doctors to serve in villages rather than connecting them with patients.
Citing an example that community health workers could bring in a transformation in the villages, he said, “In Bahamani, Chhattisgarh, there is a cluster of 22 villages. The community health workers have formed a group of 35 ladies in the villages where training is provided on delivery. They also provide a delivery kit which consists of three boxes; one each for pre-delivery, during delivery process and for post delivery. The kit has medicines, cloth required during labour, blade to cut the umbilical record, among other tools. The village has seen zero infant death in nine months.”
The critical care data should be collated with Aadhaar card, so that every person’s health can be easily accessed.
“The details of each citizen should be collected and collated in a village or town and each PHC should share this to the district hospitals and the same should be shared to the server at the state headquarter,” he added.
Summing up, Chakaravarti informed that education on health is crucial, and it should start from community level, tertiary care and in PHCs, as transformation in these areas will bring in awareness and it will improve health trajectory of a particular locality.