New Delhi: Noted medical journal, The Lancet, has launched a Citizens’ Commission “to lay out the path to achieve Universal Health Coverage in India in the coming decade”.
The commission will be led by executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Dr Gagandeep Kang of Vellore’s Christian Medical College, Vikram Patel, professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School.
“The aim of this initiative is to harness citizens’ engagement to address the long-standing need for India to move towards genuine Universal Health Care by working together to find a sustainable solution,” said Khanna at the virtual launch of the commission Friday.
What the panel will do
An article in The Lancet, published on 10 December, stated that the commission “will base its recommendations on a consultative and participatory effort that brings together key stakeholders across India’s healthcare landscape”.
The stakeholders will include “leaders” from academia, the scientific community, civil society and private healthcare industry.
Dr Kang said that to realise a resilient health system where access to healthcare is not a luxury and where the marginalised doesn’t remain elusive, all stakeholders, including the citizenry, need to work along with the government, and deliberate on solutions for effective implementation of universal health coverage.
Describing it as a first-of-its-kind initiative, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said: “The most important aspect of this commission is ‘Citizens Engagement’.”
“We want citizens to pull rather than we pushing healthcare services. And in order to do that we need to do surveys to gather insights into the experiences and expectations of our citizens,” she added.
The commission, the article stated, will be guided by the four principles of universal health coverage — it “covers all health concerns”, “includes prevention of mental and physical health problems and long-term care”, gives “financial protection… for all healthcare costs”, and “aspires to (be) a health system that can be accessed by all people”.
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Expert advice
During the launch, Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), pointed out that the first thing to do would be to look at the gaps in terms of indicators.
“Some states have health indicators way way above other states. There are lots of learnings within the country too,” she said.
Swaminathan also stressed on the need for real-time data, which people at primary healthcare centres can see and act on.
Meanwhile, NITI Aayog member V.K. Paul, who was also present at the launch, highlighted other issues that the commission should focus on.
“Our public spending on health has to increase. We made a commitment to go to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by the year 2025… two-third comes from the state government, one-third comes from the Union Government. So I request you to look at states’ participation in public spending, which must be disaggregated,” he said.
Paul added that the commission should also look at the scarcity of specialists, the impetus that could be given to creating health infrastructure and institutions that could be added or strengthened to create a stronger health system.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is among the distinguished founder-investors of ThePrint. Please click here for details on investors.
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Funny commission.
Hardly any Indian citizens or OCI holders in it!!