In an effort to bridge the gap between the industry and government, a dialogue is necessary and with this in mind the Disease Management Association of India (DMAI) organised an event to bring both sides together and engage the private sector in the programs of the ministry of health and family welfare (MOHFW). Moderated by Rajendra Gupta, President of DMAI, the event was attended by CEOs from the pharma and healthcare industry as well as government officials. Starting the session, Dr K Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) strongly emphasised the importance of a strong health system as a primer to economic growth calling for greater investment in the area.
“There is a greater need to go beyond an all government approach to health and adopt a society approach wherein NGOs, healthcare providers, public sector and government work in partnership to help meet the country’s challenges and needs.” He said that there is a need to redefine PPPs as partnerships for public purposes that are aligned to the needs of the society, giving examples of 108 ambulance service, Chiranjeevi scheme, Gujarat National Blindness Control Programme and Tuberculosis Control Programme, which have been successful.
He lamented the long term neglect of public health, citing sub standard health programmes and lack of expertise in programme delivery and optimisation. “The solution lies in empowering non physician health providers who can deliver basic services such as blood pressure management and run hypertension clinics both in rural and urban areas. This has been corroborated by various studies worldwide,” he said. Setting up a regulatory environment that monitors spurious drugs thus ensuring drug safety, a clear cut policy for medical devices and tapping on the tremendous opportunity of using our public health workers to meet global demand can help put India on the global map, he opined.
Anil Swarup, Director General, Labour Welfare, who was at the helm of the hugely successful Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, talked at length about this unique scheme. It is a one of its kind cashless, paperless (in the world) scheme that is portable specific to the needs of poor, illiterate, migratory workers. The success of the scheme can be gauged form the fact that it has covered 110 million people in 26 states with 32 million smart cards issued till now and 75,000 being issued almost everyday. “The scheme has empowered the poor who can now walk into any of the 72,000 hospitals empanelled under it. 98 per cent of the claims are settled in 30 days. People have found so much value in the scheme that they are ready to pay full premium now”, he said. The scheme has been particularly successful in Tripura, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Mizoram thus making it the only public sponsored smart card project that has revolutionised healthcare, he informed.
Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure & Innovations outlined a five-step road to the achievement of the country’s healthcare agenda. Foremost, he said was to modify existing healthcare infrastructure facilities and get them in-line with acceptable standards as well as building capacity in terms of a workforce of trained doctors, paramedics and technicians in rural and urban areas alongwith increasing numbers of those trained as healthcare workers at colleges and universities. He also outlined the important role played by ICT in healthcare, stressing the need for strong health information systems in the form of electronic health records, telemedicine etc. “Integration of traditional healthcare systems such as Ayurveda and Unani medicine that has been passed on from generations would help us meet the challenges of the future,” he reiterated. This would help us cut costs and increase access, he added. And finally, cost effective solutions in the form of uniquely innovative systems of health delivery would better help address the country’s challenges, he added.
The dialogue seems to have generated results that could have long term impact, but this is just the beginning. “The private sector has decided to adopt districts for the mass screening programs, which will result in massive improvement in the number of screenings conducted by the MOHFW. The state of Jammu & Kashmir has decided to adopt RSBY in 10 districts immediately,” informed Gupta, who is also the Chair for the Government Industry dialogue. Companies have also come forward to help the Government in leveraging IT capabilities of the sector, forge wider collaborations for various programmes of the Government to make healthcare more affordable, accessible and efficient for the common man, he added.
EH News Bureau