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Dr B K Modi
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Almost 70 per cent of 1.2 billion Indians live in communities away from doctors, clinics and pharmacies. It is ironical that even 66 years after Independence, India invests only 1.2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in healthcare sector against four per cent in developed countries like the US, Britain, Australia, Norway and Brazil.
At the same time, India has an average of 0.6 doctors per 1,000 people against the global average of 1.23. As a result, most residents are left without access to treatment, medicine and health insurance cover.
The annual income loss due to diabetes, stroke and heart diseases is estimated at $ 54 billion by 2015, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The total economic cost of three tobacco related diseases – cardiovascular, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary – is over $ six billion.
Healthcare is a social goal which is becoming more plausible, feasible and accessible globally. The spread of mobile phones opens new possibilities for delivering healthcare services cheaply and effectively to millions of people.
There is a growing body of evidence that technology can be brought to bear on challenges of rising population, scarce resources and financial limitations for providing care to remotely-located or under-served people.
The combination of electronic health records, mobile health devices, virtual teamwork and electronically-enabled disease and knowledge management has emerged as a platform for catalysing the transformation of healthcare in developed world.
Indian parliamentarians should thus provide a supportive policy environment as eHealth and tele-health require significant investments in technology and infrastructure. The participation of private sector is critical – particularly in building the basic infrastructure to support these emerging technologies.
I believe access to modern healthcare system should be made a fundamental right if the country aspires to become an economic superpower. It is interesting to note that 75 to 80 per cent of incremental investments in recent years have been by the private sector.
The Indian healthcare industry, currently estimated at $75 billion, is expected to grow to $280 billion by 2020. India thus needs to augment its healthcare capacity to meet the booming demand as over 2.4 million doctors and two million hospital beds will be required in the next decade.
Various experts say the time has also come for convergence of pharma and biotech, of academia and industry, of healthcare and information technology, of government and pharma industry to ensure good quality medicines at affordable prices for most people. The catalyst here again is new emerging technologies.
Official figures show that India has 12,760 hospitals having 576,000 beds. Of these, 6,795 hospitals with 149,000 beds are in rural areas and 3,748 hospitals with 400,000 beds are in urban areas. The average distance travelled by urban and rural population to access health services is 6 and 19 km which significantly increases the total cost of treatment. And 20 million Indians are pushed below poverty line every year due to out-of-pocket spending on health.
About 6.6 million children aged under five years die every year – or 18 000 every day – mostly due to infectious diseases. The problem can be tackled through a three-pronged strategy of crisis management, timely care and cure through early diagnosis.
India needs to look beyond grandiose populist schemes and instead devise realistic plans to increase the outreach of public health system. The government should increase GDP share of healthcare system and aggressively forge public-private partnership model to reach the last mile.
Emphasis should be on building lasting blocks of healthcare infrastructure that reach out to the bottom of pyramid instead of short-term populism. The health of a country’s population defines the state of development. A healthy population holds greater capacity to access opportunities for education, knowledge and employment.
