Booster Dose

With record healthcare expenditure and allocations focussing on mitigating the impact of Covid-19, it’s a shot in the arm for the sector

- P.B. Jayakumar

The highest-ever healthcare allocation in a budget will provide the much-needed boost to the ailing economy, and pave the way for a robust, holistic public healthcare infrastructure to tackle future pandemics, according to industry experts.

The Budget outlay for ‘Health and Wellbeing’ for 2021/22 came in at a record ₹2,23,846 crore, a 137 per cent increase over this year’s Budget estimate of ₹94,452 crore. It is about 1.6 per cent of India’s projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at ₹134.4 lakh crore for 2020/21. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who earmarked ₹35,000 crore for Coronavirus vaccination as a short-term overall reset to correct the ailing economy, also announced a two-pronged strategy after listening to experts in the sector.

The first being tackling the pandemic to usher in a V-shaped recovery with a short-term view, and the second, a holistic approach to address long-term shortfalls in the healthcare sector. “The Covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented medical crisis that underlined the importance of building a resilient infrastructure” says Prathap Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals, and the pioneer of organised healthcare in India since the 1980s.

“While the Budget is cognizant of the country’s immediate economic needs, it also lays out a medium-term vision of three-five years,” feels Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Piramal Group.