Equitable Healthcare : Reality Or Rhetoric ?

The hard push symbolic lines – “Go health “, “Health for all”, “Healthy India” are good enough to give people a push to work hard towards improving health conditions at every level. But this fire-blowing assertive sound tends to mask the milder one’s saying “rampant malnutrition” , “ still high IMR” , “ Healthcare is unaffordable” and we realize that we systematically  tend to unhear this very crucial and critical sound which is no one’s but one of ours , our own country men,  our brothers and sisters.

In India, despite improvements in access to health care, inequalities are related to socioeconomic status, geography, and gender, and are compounded by high out-of-pocket expenditures, with more than three-quarters of the increasing financial burden of health care being met by households. Health-care expenditures exacerbate poverty, with about 39 million additional people falling into poverty every year as a result of such expenditures.

Voicing for healthcare is not the mere agenda here but the underlying purpose is to sensitize public and professionals for a longer term, get them thinking, touch their hearts and create realizations that there are many more “our people” whose healthcare needs have to be addressed.

Though with the advent of technology in healthcare, e-health, quality health, faster service, informed consumer etc, things have changed to certain extent, but only for a certain sect..! There have not been enough interventions for the major chuck of population which gets marginalized in every scheme, plan and policy.

Thinks are happening, happening for good and but not good enough…I would say not substantially enough. The soul and needs of the common man are not represented most of the time.

Paradigm shift in healthcare: Towards Equity

This discourse is very critical, especially on the lines of healthcare financing methods and making health affordable. Imbalance in resource allocation, inadequate physical access to high-quality health services and human resources for health, high out-of-pocket health expenditures, inflation in health spending, and behavioral factors that affect the demand for appropriate health care are some of the new age challenges.

I am happy that Clairvoyance2011 has decided to give voice to all these issues. This platform will be an opportunity for us to bring together distinguished healthcare professionals on a common stage and discuss these issues. As we expect, this might lead to new solutions / suggestions coming in and guiding our way forward.

With a note on anticipated success, I would just like to say – “everything is possible, we just need a dig with a Heart”.

By: Dr. Arti Thapliyal,
      Member- Team Clairvoyance,

      School of Health Systems Studies, 

      TISS, Mumbai