Importance of Primary healthcare in India

What is the issue?

Developing health and wellness(H&W) centres is a well thought out step for renewing focus on comprehensive primary care.

What is the importance of H&W centres towards ensuring primary care?

• The Union government announced health and wellness centres under its Ayushman Bharat programme as the foundation for public health system in the country.
• These centres are intended to provide outpatient care, immunisation, maternal and child health services, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and other services.
• These centres will be linked to secondary and tertiary care and will be supplied with adequate drugs and diagnostic services.
• Once developed, these centres will help ameliorating basic health problems including early diagnosis and treatment of NCDs, thereby avoiding complications in the latter stage.
• This would translate into lower cost of treatments at the secondary and tertiary-care levels.

What are the advantages of primary healthcare?

• Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) with a comprehensive primary-care approach will ensure healthcare with higher coverage and at lower cost.
• Higher public spending in primary care alleviate household out-of-pocket expenditure(OOP) to a large extent.
• It can contribute to realising SDG Goal 3 of promoting Good health and well-being to all with adequate financial protection.
• Countries like UK have already achieved lower rate of mortality and better health outcomes by re-orienting their strategies towards primary care.

What more does it need?

• Focus - A higher percentage of primary care expenditure is on personalised, curative care, leaving a minimum amount for population-based primary preventive care.
• Achieving comprehensive primary care requires a paradigm shift from disease-control vertical programmes(curative) to community-led, people-oriented primary care(preventive).
• Implementation - Involving nurses and allied health professionals in primary care service delivery models can lower the burden of a low doctor-strength ratio.
• The role of public health professionals assumes paramount importance.
• They can help design outreach and preventive programmes and implement the continuing health programme effectively.
• Also a trained pool of social workers, psychiatrists, counsellors with public health orientation can intensify the reach of public service delivery in India.

• Spending - Approximately, 51% of total government expenditure on health is spent on primary care.
• This needs to be stepped up to at least two-third of the government expenditure as suggested in the national health policy.

• Role of states - The states have higher responsibility than the Centre in matters related to health.
• Hence, the blueprints of primary care can further be redefined by the states in view of their local needs.

Source: Financial Express