By: Dr Arti Thapliyal,
MHA-Health (2010-12)
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.
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 Clairvoyance
2011 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”.
Please visit http://clairvoyance2011.blogspot.com/ for more details on Clairvoyance 2011.
