Dreams of a Healthy India: Democratic Health Care in Post-Covid Times (Rethinking India)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Dreams of a Healthy India, the ninth volume in the Rethinking India series, is an attempt to demystify the issues of health care and health systems for the general reader, and to simultaneously provoke rethinking on several critical dimensions through writings by policymakers and academics. Its introductory essay and the thirteen subsequent essays lay out the scenario as well as the challenges in this regard, and provide actionable solutions. These are solutions for the present times that can simultaneously contribute to sustainable health care for the future. Complex ideas are not made simplistic but are presented in simple language, with some illustrative case studies, vignettes and data that speak for themselves.

The book, published in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, sheds light on the complex systemic layers and processes that influence people's health in their everyday lives. It argues that there has to be a reassessment of the popular image of health care as medical care alone, as well as of the nineteenth-and twentieth-century imagination of hospitals and health centres that we still work with. Systemic issues, such as increasing doctor-patient distrust, plural health knowledge systems and health governance, need to be understood with analytical rigour and dealt with in the collaborative spirit of the twenty-first century. Democratic health care in the present times will have to ensure the dignity of the patient, the community health workers, nurses and doctors-something that is increasingly getting lost in the contemporary health-care system.

This volume suggests that an indigenously developed health-care system, based on public- community partnerships, and respect for the plurality of needs, experiences and knowledge, can generate such health care for every Indian.

RITU PRIYA, professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, is a medical graduate and a community health researcher. She has published the edited volume Dialogue on AIDS: Perspectives for the Indian Context and a book titled Lok Swasthya Mein Samagrata Ki Khoj. She has been adviser (public health planning) with the National Health Systems Resource Centre under the National Rural Health Mission, and member of advisory committees for the Planning Commission, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National AIDS Control Organization, Department/Ministry of AYUSH and the Indian Council for Medical Research.

SYEDA HAMEED is a feminist writer actively engaged in public affairs. She was a member of the National Commission for Women from 1997 to 2000 and member (Health) of the Planning Commission of India for two terms, from 2004 to 2014. She has engaged with several Indian and international civil society organizations in initiating pathbreaking changes. She is the founder of organizations such as the Muslim Women's Forum, Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA), South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) and the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation.

This volume on 'Dreams of a Healthy India', part of the Rethinking India series, comes at a time when the COVID pandemic has foregrounded health, health care and health systems as issues of critical importance in the public mind. It has brought home the significance of the public system as the major source of health- care activities for disease control and medical care. At a time when the private sector was being considered the more efficient provider of quality health care, this has led to interest in the upgrading of public-health systems. At the same time, the pandemic has also given added salience to people's own self-care and access to medical care from home. The COVID-generated crisis has, thus, led to an enhanced interest in the contents of this volume.

This volume is an attempt to demystify the issues of health care and health systems for the general reader, as well as to simultaneously provoke rethinking on several critical dimensions by policymakers and academics. Its introductory essay and the thirteen subsequent essays lay out the scenario as well as the challenges and then provide doable solutions. These are solutions for the present times that can simultaneously contribute to sustainable health care for the future. Cast in an accessible style, these essays present the challenges of the current scenario in all its varied hues. Complex ideas are not made simplistic but are presented in simple language, with some illustrative case studies and vignettes or data that speaks for itself.

You are an exceptionally lucky Indian if you have a trustworthy doctor to turn to. You are equally lucky if you have gained full height, do not suffer from daily aches and pains, are not wracked by bouts of acute respiratory illnesses or other more chronic conditions. These common ailments afflict a vast majority of Indians, and frequently spiral into crippling crises for individuals and families.

It's ironic that a nation that aspires to be a global superpower pays so little heed to empowering its citizens for ensuring their wellbeing, to guarantee what India's first prime minister so poetically characterized as fullness of life. This is when India has grown from being a 'low-income country' to a 'middle-income country', with economic growth rates outpacing those of most nations. Our doctors and nurses have become a mainstay of the American, British and other nations' health services.