What is the issue?
- The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission has fined Apollo hospital chain Rs 30 lakh over the death of a 4-month-old.
- The commission was set up in response to widespread public protests over mistreatment and overcharging.
What did the WHO recommend?
- WHO representative in India had sought regulation of the private healthcare sector.
- It also asked the government to consider tax based financing of universal health coverage.
- This, along with a degree of regulation of private delivery can achieve something meaningful.
What is the present state of healthcare?
- There is a massive shortfall in state delivery of affordable healthcare.
- Therefore, people are forced to turn to private deliverers and becoming prone to overcharge and underserve.
- Over 80% of what Indians spend on healthcare is out of pocket.
- In 2016-17 state and central governments spent 1.4% of GDP on health compared to a global average of 5.99%.
- The far greater challenge is to improve the quality of management of the public health service.
- So that the enhanced state funding translates into at least somewhat acceptable delivery.
What are the problems?
- Lack of functioning primary health centres across the country which have doctors, paramedics and a stock of essential medicines to distribute.
- Over concentration of new super speciality hospitals.
- A lot of investment has been made in equipment but there is often an issue with staff being posted to run them.
- The national doctor patient ratio is poor compared to international benchmarks, but the ratio for rural areas is even worse.
- This is because doctors are reluctant to move out of urban areas.
What might be an effective solution?
- Make district hospitals into teaching hospitals where a preference is given to local students.
- This increases the hances of them working in areas where they come from.
- Rural areas also face a severe shortage of paramedics.
- Have more nursing colleges and train the students to become ‘nurse practitioners’, who can deliver basic diagnosis and prescribe essential treatment.
- Two-year courses for nurse practitioners in critical care have been started.
Source: Business Line