Solving Healthcare Issues

Do we care?

- Ashok K. Agarwal

EVEN AFTER NEARLY seven decades of Independence and a 8-9 per cent growth rate in the recent past, two-thirds of Indians do not have access to tap water and a clean toilet, over a third are malnourished, while a million and-a-half children die before they turn five. Millions continue to die or suffer from communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases, which are not only treatable but also at an incredibly low cost. Such systematic inequities necessitate the negotiating presence of a strong and assertive state.

The directive principles under Article 47, states, “the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties”. Nowhere does India’s Constitution explicitly state health as a fundamental human right. Sujatha Rao, former Union Health Secretary, in her book, Do We Care? India’s Health System, has analysed the challenges facing India’s health system.

The initial chapters deal with evolution of India’s health system, health financing and governance issues. The second part of her book has a critical analyses of implementation of polices. The evolution of the health sector in India beginning with the Joseph Bhore Committee (1946) to the developments in the initial years after Independence and constituting the various Expert Committees to Alma-Ata Declaration (1978) and going on to the First National Health Policy in 1983 is appropriately described.