CREATE PUBLIC HEALTH CAPACITY AND CADRE

The National Health Policy of 2017 aims to establish public health management cadre in all states. However, progress has been extremely slow

- K SRINATH REDDY

Malcolm Gladwell, the celebrated author, was posed a question by a viewer in the Munk Dialogues webcast from Canada in April 2020. He was asked what, in his view, could be the best thing to come out of the global pandemic of Covid-19. Without any hesitation, Gladwell said it would be the resurgence of public health as a widely respected discipline. He went on to say that public health was a major influence in advancing human health and well-being in the 20th century, giving the examples of many infectious diseases that have been quelled, like smallpox, poliomyelitis and HIV-AIDS. Despite these successes of public health, technological advances in illness care disproportionately captured the limelight and resources.

He could have well added the ongoing, but only partially successful, battle against tobacco and the more successful but still needed programmes to reduce maternal and child mortality. When public health is confronted by powerful commercial interests that oppose action against unhealthy foods, polluting industries, tobacco and alcohol, policymakers and sections of the public are swayed to act against public health evidence and advice. However, even in some incontrovertible areas like clean water and sanitation, services are not made universally available while economic growth is pursued zealously through lopsided models of development.