Mentoring In Rural India

It is in the interest of private facilities to work towards improved quality of care at rural facilities.

- Piyush Mehra

The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), launched by the central Government, is being referred to as the world’s largest health insurance plan. The plan envisages covering 10 crore poor and vulnerable families which amounts to approximately 50 crore beneficiaries. The coverage amount has been set at Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation. This amount is significantly higher than the cover provided by other central or state Government schemes. Over a period, the scheme is expected to subsume the existing central scheme, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), as well as many state insurance schemes.

India’s poor health outcomes are well documented. A UNICEF report released this year named India as the 12th worst country for new-borns among 53 lower-middle income countries. The country’s neonatal mortality rate (child deaths in first 28 days, per 1,000 live births) of 25.4 puts it behind smaller neighbours like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

A major determinant of neonatal survival is coverage and quality of rural health facilities, as India continues to live in its villages. According to the latest Union census, 68.8% of India’s citizens live in rural areas. India has a well-designed system on paper – tiers of health facilities from large tertiary facilities and advanced research institutes down to Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Primary Health Centres (PHCs).