By Parveen Chopra, IANS
New York : Needing over $20 billion to build healthcare infrastructure, India would inevitably have to privatise healthcare but it should check the profit motive that has bedevilled the system in the US, experts said at a conference here.
The conference, organised Nov 19-20 by the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and the New York-based Asia Society, also discussed the possibility of the US and India partnering in drug discovery, generic production and marketing as well as biotechnology.
Falguni Sen, ORF healthcare adviser, cited a 2002 Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-McKinsey report as saying that the health sector in India is expected to grow from $30 billion to $40 billion by 2012, but requires fresh investment of around $25 billion in the next few years to establish quality healthcare facilities.
“In the absence of government resources, India has to raise private capital,” Sen said.
Arnold Relman, professor emeritus of social medicine at the Harvard Medical School, cautioned India against the “sales pitch of privatisation”. He said the country should understand what privatisation has done to the US and then look elsewhere.
“Healthcare in the US is the most expensive in the world and yet it is a disgrace,” said Relman, author of “A Second Opinion: Rescuing America’s Health Care”.
The US is expected to spend up to 20 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare by 2015, yet one in four workers in the country remains uninsured.
However, Relman is not averse to privatisation where the prime motive is not maximising profit.
Ranjit Roy Chaudhury, chairman of the Apollo Hospitals Education and Research Foundation, pointed out that the drawbacks in the existing system in India — such as the government spending on healthcare hovering at around one percent of the GDP — cannot be corrected without going to the private sector.
Arguing for a merger of the two systems, Chaudhury said: “In India’s march towards becoming a global power in healthcare, when the private sector develops drugs, it can get patients, which it lacks, for clinical trials from government hospitals.”
B.M. Hegde, an adviser on health to the Bihar government, made a distinction between medical care, which confines itself to treating disease, and healthcare, which focuses on promotion of health and prevention of diseases. He recommended a look-in at the complementary systems of medicine, which give more importance to maintenance of health rather than the treatment of illness and are cost-effective.
Referring to the fact that 80 percent of the patients in government hospitals in India suffer from water-borne diseases because 80 percent of villages in India do not have access to clean drinking water, Hegde made a case for first ensuring clean water, nutritious food and housing for the disadvantaged and then privatising healthcare.