Eight years ago,
I started my career in public health bang in the middle of the market-facing lot
and was, for the longest time, unable to see beyond that particular point of view. I’ve found myself creeping towards the middle recently though. Maybe it comes from spending time with friends who work in places where markets seem like distant
realities, places where people live with zero access to formal healthcare,
places where an easily treatable illness can easily be the cause of death and
debt.
I began 2019
with a goal to better understand healthcare systems. I have an excellent
learning ground too – I live in India, home to the largest pool of healthcare
needs, and perhaps the most complex health infrastructure in the world. In this
article, I plan to summarise my big picture understanding of India’s healthcare
system, under four heads:
- What are the major events in India’s healthcare system evolution?
- What does the healthcare infrastructure in the country look like? As in, how is the healthcare delivered?
- What are the governance mechanisms? In other words, where will the innovation and change come from?
- What are the big healthcare issues to think about?
- that a report submitted in 1946 continues to be the basis of not only current health structures, but also ongoing policy discussions,
- that we started to talk about the need to engage with the private sector only in 2002,
- that 19 years after the government launched the pulse polio program, India was officially declared polio-free. This gives me hope for TB eradication. But not too much - the plan was to eliminate kala-azar and filariasis by 2017 and leprosy by 2018 (spoiler alert: we didn't)
Part 3: What are the governance mechanisms in healthcare? Who does what?
Part 4: What are the biggest issues in healthcare?
Part 4: What are the biggest issues in healthcare?
Thanks for putting it as it is! I am perplexed by the events you share too. Specially: "that we started to talk about the need to engage with the private sector only in 2002." And that we haven't been able to regulate private sector till now! Being a lawyer might make me biased, but I feel faulty governance is a problem that runs everywhere in public policy sphere and manifests as these issues.
ReplyDeleteWaiting for the next part.