Why do people die or suffer, despite so many medical facilities in India?
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New Delhi: Some 2.4 million Indians die of treatable conditions every year, the worst situation among 136 nations studied for a report published in The Lancet.
Poor care quality leads to more deaths than insufficient access to healthcare--1.6 million Indians died due to poor quality of care in 2016, nearly twice as many as due to non-utilisation of healthcare services (838,000 persons).
“For too long, the global health discourse has been focused on improving access to care, without sufficient emphasis on high quality care,” Muhammad Pate, co-chair of the commission that produced the report, who is also chief executive of Big Win Philanthropy and former minister of state for health in Nigeria, said in a statement. “Providing health services without guaranteeing a minimum level of quality is ineffective, wasteful and unethical,” he said.
As the Indian government readies to roll out its ambitious national health protection scheme, the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, by the end of September 2018, the study’s findings are crucial.
“We need to better measure the quality of our health system as a composite entity rather than be merely content with certifying hospitals and laboratories,” said Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, a Delhi-based think tank, about the lack of mechanisms for monitoring quality in India. “Some elements of quality, mainly in maternal and child health, are being monitored under NRHM [National Rural Health Mission]. However, composite measures of the health system overall are unavailable,” he said.
The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, which could go some distance to address this lack, is yet to be adopted by many states even though it was passed by parliament way back in 2010, Reddy said.