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17 Jul 2019
GS Paper 2
Social Justice
Nationwide strike by doctors recently, over the issue of violence against doctors, somewhere reflects the deeper malaise of inadequacies in health care system. Comment. (250 words)
Approach
- Briefly mention some recent incidents.
- Mention challenges currently present in healthcare system
- Suggest remedial measures
- Include relevant data or survey report for value addition.
- Give a future course of action/ way forward.
Introduction
The nationwide strike by doctors, which has been triggered by a brutal assault on a resident doctor in West Bengal, indicates the systemic problems in the healthcare sector.
The expensive and unaffordable treatment, poor infrastructure, overburdened doctors and poor doctor patient ratio adversely affects optimal attention to patients which in turn creates trust deficit in doctor patient relationship and paves the way for violence against doctors.
Issues in Indian Healthcare Sector
Remedial Measures
- Legal Framework: Comprehensive legal framework with effective implementation mechanism is needed to deal with violence against healthcare personnel. For example: Medical Protection Act passed by West Bengal government fails to curb violence against healthcare personnel due to lax implementation.
- Governance: Creation of an All-India Public Health Services to strengthen the ailing medical sector.
- Infrastructure and access: The government needs to prioritize improving the essential infrastructure, lack of which results in casualties whose brunt is borne by healthcare staff and families of the patient. Moreover, the number of PHCs need to be increased to improve accessibility to basic healthcare for all. A provision in this regard has been made by Ayushman Bharat, under which 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres will be created.
- Medical Education: To achieve higher standards of medical education, we need to promote an equal distribution of resources, redesign curricula with stricter implementation and improved assessment methodologies, cut down cost and time on medical education; all of which will generate efficient medical graduates and paramedics which will consequently better health care delivery.
- Use of Technology: Artificial Intelligence will prove instrumental in enhancing accuracy in clinical insights, security, and could also be fundamental in reducing manual redundancy and ensuring fewer errors as we transition to a world of quality in care.
- Universal Healthcare : India came closer to universal healthcare through Ayushman Bharat Scheme which provides 5 lakh healthcare insurance to 10 crore poor families, still a huge chunk of the population is left behind. The scheme needs to be universally applicable.
- Improve the funding mechanism: Fund flow should be regular and adequate. Projects should be clearly defined and target oriented so that funds can be matched to the results delivered. CSR and PPP can play an important role to improve funding.
Conclusion
To realize the goal of high standards of healthcare services it is imperative for government. to increase the healthcare funding. National Health Policy, which commits to raise public expenditure on health to 2.5% of GDP, must pay as much attention to scaling up infrastructure and the capabilities of government hospitals.
