Dear Friends,
We are delighted to present to you the next edition of the monthly newsletter by the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System. This edition brings you the latest analysis on delivering comprehensive healthcare, including the role of health promotion in advancing well-being, equity, and sustainable development, the importance of Health Savings Accounts for India, a greater sensitisation to palliative care, and more. As a Citizens’ Commission, we invite the public to participate, provide input and continue to engage with this new initiative.
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The webinar was a joint Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System event with Health Systems Transformation Platform and was being held to mark World Health Day. This year, the theme for World Health Day was the role of health promotion in advancing well-being, equity, and sustainable development. Our distinguished panel discussed the contribution that health promotion can make to realizing these goals, evidence-based policies for health promotion, and experiences from regional examples of health promotion programs.
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India has been at the forefront of innovations in financial inclusion; 90% of Indian households have a bank account now, and access to digital payments is rapidly growing. Perhaps Health Savings Accounts can build on these strengths and reduce the distress associated with OOPE in health, write Aarushi Gupta, Bindu Ananth and Hasna Ashraf.
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Health care professionals need greater sensitisation to palliative care. Palliative care postings for medical and nursing students, training workshops in palliative care, and encouraging doctors to pursue a career in palliative care will improve access to care as well as spread awareness among the need for these services, write Dr Parth Sharma and Dr Ajoy Oommen John.
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Rather than such a static come-to-me model, health services need to reach households. Our frontline workers are capable of doing that with adequate training and support, writes K Srinath Reddy.
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From just one test conducted in the lab at the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, in January 2020 to nearly 0.8 billion Covid-19 tests conducted as of March 30, 2022, according to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data, India has grown its testing capacity exponentially, resulting in a domestic market of about $10 billion, writes Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.
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Covid-19 was a wake-up call to governments across the world, including India, to reimagine their public health systems and the way health services are delivered. Our health system needs to be resilient enough to respond to long-term consequences of the pandemic as well as prepare for similar future health emergencies, writes Poonam Muttreja.
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The question of the number of people who died in India as a result of the pandemic has been festering in recent months. It is in everyone's interest to settle discrepancy between scientific and official estimates, writes Vikram Patel.
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Building a Roadmap: Lancet Citizens' Commission Theory of Change Workshop |
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Towards Hopeful Futures | CORE Net Conference 2022 Opening Plenary |
The opening plenary for the CORE Net Conference was organised in partnership with the Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System. on April 8. The panel titled 'Towards Hopeful Futures' discussed the psycho-social impacts of the pandemic on general populations (especially young persons) as well health care workers; the absence of systematic public dissemination of data through the pandemic, and the key role of transparency in information for managing future crises such as pandemics.
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Commission Members in Spotlight |
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"A primary challenge in achieving UHC is basic geographic provisioning across the length and breadth of India. In other words, the quantity and quality of the coverage of health care systems. While India has made great strides in expanding its geographical coverage, whether the necessary quality has accompanied is unclear," says S V Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health
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"Healthcare is a complex topic that deals with critical elements of citizens’ lives – and great care has to be taken to ensure that citizens’ interests are served first. Alignment of incentives amongst different stakeholders and ensuring that solutions can scale across a diverse spectrum of socio-economic and technological status of the users," says Ajay Bakshi, Neurosurgeon, Neuroscientist, McKinsey consultant and ex-CEO of Max Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals and India Operations of IHH/Parkway Hospitals
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We love hearing back from you! Please send your comments, suggestions, and contributions for these newsletters, including research highlights and published features to info@citizenshealth.in
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