Our Tagline Is 'Transforming Healthcare Through Innovations'

Dr Dipanjan Sujit Roy, CEO, WISH Foundation in an interaction with Prathiba Raju speaks about how the non-profit organisation is building a value-added primary healthcare centre and transforming healthcare through innovations and to bring in innovative, in processes, products and devices

- Prathiba Raju

Why do you think primary healthcare centres are important for India?

Currently, the country’s population is approximately around 1.37 billion. For such a vast country, the first point of contact should be primary healthcare centre (PHC), which is the basic structural and functional unit of the public health services and 99 per cent of our health problems and issues can be solved at this level. For this, we need a robust PHC as it will be of major help in the current system and government hospitals like AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital will not be over-burdened. A majority of these patients from northern states go even for OPD consultation to such big hospitals, which showcases that PHCs are not functioning optimally as they should have been. In order to have a better health outcome, importance should be given to PHCs.

Can you elaborate on WISH’s 300 primary healthcare clinics?

Wadhwani Initiative for Sustainable Healthcare (WISH) is a non-profit organisation, which delivers improved PHCs by building a value-added model that can be showcased and adopted by the government. Our tagline is transforming healthcare through innovations and to bring it to processes, products and devices. Ours is a PPP model, which strengthens the PHC delivery system of a particular locality with early, door step diagnosis and preventive care, helps in reduction of maternal and infant deaths and reduces the burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) using innovative approaches. We just don’t run the PHC but we are into preventive and promotive service also. As of now, WISH is running 300 such hubs ,spoke-models of primary health, wellness centres and associated sub centres in five different states — Rajasthan, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.

Any particular reason for only being in these five states?