National Health Policy: Back out would become formidable

People are dissatisfied, agitated and enraged. The crisis, at least in case of public health, deepens more and more. Yet, the grandiloquence continues and has no shame!

On the last day of 2014, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the government of India announced the “Draft National Health Policy 2015” and placed the same in ‘public domain for comments, suggestions and feedback’. ‘The primary aim of the National Health Policy, 2015’, as written in the draft, is ‘to inform, clarify, strengthen and prioritize the role of the government in shaping health systems in all its dimensions’ required for ‘better health’ including ‘financial protection strategies’.

Under the draft National Health Policy, 2015 (NHP), it was also proposed that the Centre would bring ‘regulation and legislation for health’ to make it as ‘fundamental right’ whose denial would be ‘justiciable’. The draft policy clearly stated, “Such a policy formulation or resolution, we feel, would be the right signal to give a push for more public health expenditure as well as for the recognition of health as a basic human right and its realisation as goal that the nation must set itself.”

Ironically, nineteen months later, in July 2016, a senior Health Ministry official informed the press that the Cabinet did not talk about making health a ‘fundamental right’ as it would have ‘legal consequences’, but talked about ‘assured health services’. Therefore, the proposed NHP, pending for quite some time now, has been marginalized and made only to provide ‘assured health services’ to people as an ‘entitlement’.

Modi's election manifesto during 2014, accorded "high priority" to the health sector and promised a universal health assurance plan accessible and affordable for all Indians. Therefore, the National Health Policy, 2015 was welcomed in India and abroad. In 2016, the Hudson Institute (www.hudson.org) of Washington in its article “India’s Health Under Modi : Agenda For The Next Two Years” wrote, “The National Health Policy (NHP) is designed to provide modern health services to all Indians. The administration has undertaken some of the steps, outlined in the NHP and instituted a few reforms and legislation that attempt to significantly improve the quality and availability of healthcare.” But, the above declaration by the Health Ministry’s official disproves such tall claim. Moreover, the prolonged silence of the Modi government on implementation of the Policy has also raised doubts about the very perspective of the policy itself. For instance, after assuming the office in 2014, Narendra Modi government unveiled the National Health Assurance Mission (NHAM), a nationwide plan for universal health care system to provide all citizens with free drugs, diagnostic treatments, and insurance for serious ailments. And, in 2015, implementation of NHAM was delayed due to budgetary constraints! Therefore, reasons are there to believe that the government’s priority for the NHAM and for the health sector as a whole has been the least whenever the Government faces a resource crunch. The same holds true for every single public welfare activities of the government. The overall statecraft is also so suffocating that it can never bring any sigh of relief for the people. A series of articles would elaborately examine and expose various policy deficiencies of the government so far the health sector and related issues are concerned. In the very next article, we would try to understand the previous NHPs and the background of the present one.

@pradipsinterpretations