Achieving Universal Health Coverage in India

Context

Healthcare investments will enhance resilience and productivity, and enable India to have affordable universal care and Viksit Bharat by 2047.

Key Highlights

• Universal health coverage (UHC) refers to the fact that everybody has the right to access the entire spectrum of quality health services they require, when and where they require them without any financial strain. 
• It deals with the entire spectrum of necessary health services, such as health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care throughout the lifespan.
• The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda has one of its central objectives reiterated by global leaders in 2019 as a key to sustainable development. 
• The WHO is committed to ensuring that UHC reaches 1 billion additional individuals by 2025 in addition to enhancing health emergency risk relief and the overall well-being.

Why UHC Is Needed?

• There are high disparities in health among the vast and diverse population of India. Since more than 60 percent of the population relies on government welfare programs to survive at the basic level, affordable healthcare is a very crucial factor in determining health. 
• It tries to make sure that there is fair access to basic health amenities both in rural and urban settlements. UHC also will minimize out-of-pocket spending, a phenomenon that tends to plunge families into poverty.

Government Initiatives

• National Health Mission-offered in 2005-is a program that implements local owned and decentralised health systems that can offer affordable, accessible, and quality healthcare services to vulnerable populations.
• Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) was introduced by the Government of India to attain universal health care.
  • • It is the biggest social healthcare scheme in the world which has crores of poor Indian families covered under it.
• National Health Policy 2017 covers the shifting healthcare issues in India alongside the technology, socio-economic issues and patterns of diseases – including increasing incidences of lifestyle diseases like non-communicable diseases and traditional infectious diseases. 

Challenges

• Lack of balance in the distribution of healthcare infrastructure in states and districts.
• Lack of qualified health personnel, particularly in the rural and tribal areas.
• Out-of-pocket expenditure which continues to constitute a major part of health costs is high.
• India is exposed to increased non-communicable diseases and infectious diseases.
• Although sites such as eSanjeevani provide telemedicine, there are many people who do not have access to good internet or machines.

Way Forward

• Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in India is crucial to the morality, economy, and development of India as a nation. 
• In support of this objective, India needs to cover all ages, particularly the elderly, enhance primary care, establish a partnership between the public and the privates, make health financing sustainable, and encourage health literacy and preventive measures to establish an inclusive and resilient health system.

Source: The Hindu

Mains PYQ

(Q) “Besides being a moral imperative of a Welfare State, primary health structure is a necessary precondition for sustainable development.” Analyse. (2021)

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