The Centre, in collaboration with the industry, is in the process of assessing the actual cost of treatment for diseases and fixing a benchmark to make treatment affordable in the country, where 40 per cent of the people end up in debt after hospitalisation.
Delivering the keynote address at the valedictory session of the first Global Health Conference on Social Marketing and Franchising here, Additional Secretary in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare C.K. Mishra said a committee comprising industry representatives was into the task of benchmarking the treatment costs.
“Affordability is a big question and where should we fix the benchmark? We cannot do it based on the highly costly treatment in the private sector nor base it on the free healthcare delivery in the public sector,” he said.
The committee set up by the government is working to find out the actual cost of treatment in different therapeutic areas so that schemes could be formulated and treatment made affordable, he added.
The senior official also lamented that the private sector interventions in the primary sector was very low, though there was much intervention at the tertiary level, at least in the urban areas. The private sector is not yet ready to participate at the primary level and the government’s role is to fill this gap, he said.
Mishra also urged the stakeholders to come up with innovative models, especially in the medical devices sector. Technology is the only solution to make medical equipment and treatment affordable. “We look toward to the industry to come up with ideas appropriate to the health concerns of the particular country,” he added.
Earlier, speaking at a plenary on ‘Government model of universal health coverage in primary healthcare’, executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre T. Sundararaman said 40 per cent of the people end up in debt after hospitalisations in India.
The government has initiated a pilot study in 30 districts across the country to find the gaps and suggest measures to scale up the efforts on the universal healthcare coverage and the data would be released this month, he said.