In the name of better health facilities, healthcare industry is flourishing in India, which is growing at the rate of 15 percent per annum. This industry may prove to be a stumbling block to the public health movement. Today big expensive private hospitals have come up across the country. They work for net profit.
At the time of the last budget itself, it was decided that the Government of India would expand the scope of Ayushman Yojana. Now soon another 40 crore people will be included in this. With this step, a large section of the population will start getting the benefits of Ayushman Bharat scheme. But the question is, will the health problems of the common man and all the problems be reduced only by the expansion of this scheme? Significantly, more than fifty crore people (ten crore seventy four lakh families) are under the purview of this scheme. Under the Ayushman scheme, an insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh is provided annually.
According to the National Health Authority (NHA), Ayushman Bharat and Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana will get expansion with new steps. But the question is, given the increasing inequality and the number of poor in the society, will the existing central and state level health services be able to achieve the goal of public health? Significantly, under Ayushman Bharat, only the bottom forty percent of the population has got health security.
According to the data, if the different schemes of the state governments, social security schemes and various schemes of private insurance are taken together, then in total about seventy percent of the population comes under health insurance cover. That is, thirty percent of the population is still such that is completely deprived of health services.
The way people are being troubled by new and old diseases day by day, how effective is the new health policy to get rid of them, this is a big question. Despite this, it can be assumed that the central and state governments will jointly develop public health schemes in a new form and give them benefits till the last person of the country.
The worst condition in the country is in the health and employment sector. The central and state governments have taken all steps in this regard, but there is no improvement in the health of the health sector. Significantly, the existing health sector infrastructure is not capable of providing comprehensive and appropriate health facilities to those people who are not health conscious.
Clearly, a lot more needs to be done at all three levels – health care infrastructure, honest use of the availability of funds and public awareness. Public health experts believe that due to increasing population, poverty and weak health sector infrastructure, the country is facing more problems than many backward countries.
On every standard related to healthcare, we look like the most backward countries of the world. The infant mortality rate in India is fifty-two per thousand, while in Sri Lanka, which is on the verge of starvation, it is only fifteen, in the poor country Nepal, thirty-eight, in Bhutan this rate is forty-one and in the small country Maldives. is twenty. Similarly, the availability of beds in hospitals per thousand people in developed countries is 2.3 and in India it is only 0.7 per thousand. While this figure is 3.8 in India’s neighboring country China and 3.6 in Sri Lanka.
Similarly, in terms of availability of doctors, India is far behind many countries of the world. Statistics show that globally, the availability of doctors per thousand is 1.3, while in India it is just 0.7. Despite all the efforts, there is a shortage of four lakh doctors, seven lakh beds and about four million nurses in India.
It is worth noting that seventy percent of the expenditure on healthcare is from the private sector, compared to the global average of thirty-eight percent in this case. This is when the central and state governments claim that we are now in a better position than before in health services for the common man. What is the difference between the claim and the reality, this figure shows that up to eighty-six percent of the people have to spend on the medical from their own pocket. It is not hidden from anyone in the name of arbitrary disease and better treatment in private hospitals that people are exploited. The situation seen in government hospitals during the Corona period shows that there is a need for change at every level to improve the health sector.
It is noteworthy that in the government hospitals at the tehsil and block level, not enough doctors are posted there and their services are not available as per the requirement. Medicines are also such that instead of curing the merge, they cause more disease. Secondly, apart from allopathy hospitals in villages, there are few government hospitals running on effective medical systems like Homeopathy, Unani, Ayurveda, Naturopathy and Yoga.
Healthcare industry is flourishing in India in the name of better health facilities, which is growing at the rate of 15 percent per annum. This industry may prove to be a stumbling block to the public health movement. Today big expensive private hospitals have come up across the country. They work for net profit.
The Central and State Governments will have to ensure that in every hospital which has been opened with the help of Government in the name of healthcare, the poor man is treated in an appropriate manner without any discrimination. It should also be ensured that the private medical industry is not confined to a select few cities and is not over-pressurized for funding from the public sector.
With the expansion of health centers and sub-health centers in rural areas, there is a need to bridge the gaps in them. Despite the wide network of health centers and sub-centres being established across the country, if all are not getting access to better health facilities equally without discrimination, then it is a serious matter. It is worth noting that for the betterment of health services, there has been an increase in the budget for some years. Despite this, the condition of rural and urban health services in the country is pathetic.
In such a situation, it becomes difficult to understand that in spite of spending so much, why the condition of public health in our country is getting worse instead of better? In such a situation, is there not a need to formulate a new health policy, which should fix the accountability of all the parties involved in improving public health.
Public health only means, that last person should also get all kinds of facilities from government schemes, institutions, colleges, institutions without any discrimination and common man can get proper diagnosis of his health problems in time. . The way in which private hospitals get comfortable facilities, better care, easy human behavior and friendly environment with the patient, if they start getting the same in government hospitals, then why the average age of the person standing at the lowest rung of the society will not increase?