Since the outbreak of Novel Corona-virus disease 2019 (“Covid-19”) pandemic in January, different industries around the world have taken an unprecedented blow. All the major countries went under lock down exposing various flaws in various industries and threw light on the lack of readiness to tackle any deleterious situations. Almost every nation faced similar problems, just the difference was some of them had more resources to manage the issue.
Pandemic was the time when healthcare personnel had one of the hardest tasks to do in saving the citizens of a nation, with minimum casualties. The Covid-19 pandemic broke open major flaws in the healthcare industry worldwide, so did India. The country has been faced with some serious issues in healthcare facilities during Covid19 pandemic.
On prima facie, we cannot do much to improve healthcare right now, all that can be done is provide what’s needed to handle the situation on a temporary basis.
Healthcare system in India has been sailing on a broken ship for a long time, but it could not dodge the bullet of Covid-19. Before the global pandemic, India was doing well on many fronts but healthcare was still an Achilles heel, which was not tested for a long time. Even with a population of around 1.34 billion and GDP of 2.94 trillion dollars, India dedicates only 1.28% of its total GDP to the public healthcare system (5th paragraph on 23rd page), which is way less than it should be and even lesser than some nations smaller to India. For a very long time, no rock solid work has been done by the governments in India to improve the on ground reality of healthcare services.
Although Healthcare is the largest sector in terms of revenue and employment, it lacks facilities to meet the needs of people. Lack of awareness, lack of access to medical facilities, questions of affordability, shortage of workforce and most importantly, the lack of accountability on the part of executives are some of the major and long-standing problems in the health sector in India. Underfunded health care with an inefficient workforce makes this setup even more impuissant during some unprecedented acts of a pandemic like we are currently experiencing. Such vulnerable healthcare systems can collapse at any point, so how can we make our healthcare system stronger and efficient to handle any further pandemics?
Increasing expenditure by governments?
Improving accountability on the side of the government and executives should be the first priority for the
improvement in the healthcare sector. Increasing government’s input towards health budgets so that the existing health facilities should improve and more facilities should be added. The major problem that stands in front of the executives and the healthcare sector is the divide between urban and rural parts of India. Most of the metro cities in India have good healthcare even at affordable prices, but the problem with metro healthcare systems is that they’re majorly funded by the private sector and are above the reach of some percent of the population in the cities. So, it comes to a point that people with resources that can afford private hospitals are getting very good medical facilities.
On the other hand the part of people who can’t afford the private facilities move up to government hospitals which are not up to mark in metro cities either. As major funds are allocated towards private hospitals, the government hospitals work with very limited resources and inefficient workforce in metro cities. When it comes to cities which are listed as 2nd tier by the government, the facilities there work with limited resources and insufficient workforce even in private hospitals. Now, in context with the rural population; there are barely any private facilities, so people either look up to government facilities or clinics, which are either working with lack of medical facilities or lack of workforce. Both are not up to the mark to carry on a smooth process when are needed during an emergency. There is a huge divide between the health care in urban and rural areas, so to fix it the best possible way is for the government to induce funds in both rural and urban healthcare sectors and increase accountability on the side of executives. With 66% of Indians living in rural areas, it is a part of the government’s responsibility to improve healthcare equally in every division.
Encouraging private sector investment?
As reports indicate Private sector healthcare comprises most of the healthcare facilities in India. As per a report tabled; 71 percent of people visited private healthcare facilities in rural areas and 79 per cent in urban areas. This clearly shows that Private sector investments are the backbone of the Indian healthcare system. It also interprets that due to bad facilities in government healthcare centers people show a lack of trust in government facilities which overburdens the private facilities which also work with limited resources.
Growing government healthcare intuitions and educating more professionals?
As mentioned, the state of government healthcare is in despair with no light in sight. Government healthcare can only be brought back to life with religious efforts of improving it with absolutely sidelining red-tapism and not working under political pressure. Government facilities should be improved at any cost because of the poverty ratio of India and the concentration of population in the rural areas so that everyone could get proper medical aid whenever needed. Looking at the cost of private hospitals it looks quite unreachable for the population who work as daily wagers or work on minimum wages. In India, each district has a government hospital. If the governments take a firm decision to improve them it will be good for the time being. Without the improvement of government facilities, it would be hard to take in consideration that we would be tackling any further coming pandemic, if any. Coming to medical professionals, it is highly regarded that India has produced some of the best medical personnel as it has the best medical schools. But due to lack of opportunities, underpayments for hard work and inadequate facilities they tend to move from India to western counties; by improving the facilities, India may help to retain some of the best professionals which could lead India on its path of stability in medical care.
Challenges
Due to the lack of investment in health facilities, for almost two decades the gap between the people who get medical facilities and those who don’t has kept growing at a high rate. As a result of this drawback, people tend to go to clinics who have limited resources and sometimes botch up the whole medical case due to lack of experience.
High prevailing red-tapism is also one of the roadblocks in the improvement of healthcare facilities. Shortly
touching the acts and laws for a healthcare facility, The Drug and Cosmetic act in 1940 and rules in 1945 are still operative, but since then we have seen some of the new development in medicare and with technology, in healthcare medical services since 1940 and 1945 have gone places, there is a burning need to improve the laws and reform it as per current developments. Also, healthcare was kept in the state list by framers of the constitution, but now it is the time to put it in the concurrent list so that both the central and state government can exercise judiciary legislature on the healthcare facility and it’s developments.
Conclusion
In the bigger picture, the development of infrastructure should be the main aim. Building infrastructure will help the government in improving healthcare and also create employment. It can be tough for the government to provide standardized development so it should join hands with private sector investments to provide holistic development of infrastructure and healthcare. To reach any such goal, standardization is the key. A stout policy with leak-proof laws should be placed, to keep high jurisdiction on states. To reduce any kind of red-tapism and private sector frauds, a cell should be made up of experts independent of any kind of officers involved in development in the present and past. Most importantly, health care should be moved to a high-level priority group for provocative developments. As India is a growing economy it is evident that there are limited resources but to work limited resources and make the best of it for the betterment of people should be the main aim.
After Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare all around the world will have to change exponentially because every government and non governmental body needs to tackle such issues and safeguard their people. For India, the pandemic was an absolute a curse but it also works as an eye opener for the system and executive machinery, that for any further such situations, we need to buck up and work from now, so that we can reach a point where we can work on full capacity without buying out time to improve medicare when a calamity has arrived at the doorstep.
As India has made its effort in improving the army and economy, this is not an impossible task. We have to work wholeheartedly to reach this goal for the betterment of our people.
( The present article has been written by Kumar Kartikeya, an aspiring lawyer. He has keen interest in public policy formation, social services and politics)
