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Viksit Bharat and Health
Context:
India’s aspiration to become an economically developed nation by 2047 is intrinsically linked to the health and productivity of its population.
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- As we navigate the challenges of 2025, emerging and future threats to public health demand proactive attention.
- Prioritising health promotion and disease prevention at the population level, coupled with efficient and equitable delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic services for individuals, is crucial.
- For India’s health system to flourish with vitality in 2047, its foundational transformation must begin now.
- The twin strands of financial and human resources must serve as the DNA for its growth and development.
Universal Health Coverage as the Foundation
- UHC: Primary healthcare-led universal health coverage (UHC) is the cornerstone for building a robust health system.
- Financing: Achieving this goal requires increased public financing and greater budget allocations from both central and state governments.
- UHC hinges on two critical indicators: financial protection for individuals and comprehensive service coverage.
- Workforce: To deliver quality healthcare that meets the diverse needs of families across the nation, India must develop a multi-skilled health workforce distributed equitably across urban and rural areas.
- Given the current shortage of highly skilled doctors and the time required to bridge this gap, the immediate focus must be on training a large cadre of technology-enabled frontline health workers and allied health professionals.
Ayushman Bharat Mission
- The Ayushman Bharat mission provides a framework for an equitable and effective health system.
- Its components include an upgraded primary care architecture, enhanced health infrastructure, financial protection for vulnerable populations, and a digital health technology push to integrate various functional units of the health ecosystem.
- To maximise its impact, these components must be seamlessly connected to create a cohesive system capable of driving the nation toward a healthier future.
- Digital health initiatives play a pivotal role in this endeavour, from providing epidemiological intelligence to monitoring the outcomes of health programmes.
- Integrated data systems can enable targeted interventions at district and block levels, addressing disparities in health indicators across regions, socio-demographic groups, and genders.
Addressing Emerging Health Challenges
- As India undergoes an epidemiological transition, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and mental health disorders have surpassed infectious diseases in terms of disease burden.
- NCDs now account for two-thirds of all deaths, many of which occur during an individual’s most productive years.
- Despite their growing prevalence, data on NCDs and their risk factors remain limited, gathered primarily through sporadic regional surveys.
- Infectious diseases continue to pose significant challenges, especially with the rise in zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
- Surveillance systems like the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) must be expanded and upgraded to provide real-time data on both infectious and non-communicable diseases.
- Innovations such as wastewater surveillance can play a critical role in detecting emerging microbial threats and monitoring AMR levels.
- Climate change further exacerbates health risks, facilitating the spread of waterborne and vector-borne diseases.
- An integrated “One Health” approach is essential, combining microbial surveillance across humans, animals, and wildlife with climate data to mitigate these threats.
- Big data analytics must form the backbone of this surveillance system, enabling timely and effective responses.
Bridging Gaps Through Digital Health Integration
- Efficiently integrated data systems are crucial for both population-level health management and individual patient care.
- Currently, the lack of connectivity between diagnostic and treatment-related data within healthcare facilities, as well as across different institutions, impedes accurate diagnoses and rational treatment.
- These gaps also compromise patients’ rights to access comprehensive information about their health.
- While the digital health mission is gradually being incorporated into public health systems, most private healthcare facilities have yet to fully embrace it.
- This disconnect in India’s mixed healthcare system hinders the delivery of affordable, appropriate care at scale and jeopardises individual health outcomes.
- To address these challenges, digital platforms must bridge the divide between primary care and secondary or tertiary hospital care under publicly funded health insurance schemes like PMJAY and state health programmes.
- Connecting public and private data repositories and referral systems will enable the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to large Indian datasets, facilitating the development of context-specific diagnostic and treatment algorithms.
By prioritising UHC, integrating digital technologies, and addressing health inequities, India can build a resilient healthcare system that meets the needs of its diverse population.
