BENGALURU: The webinar at the 12th FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards on Tuesday saw a pitch being made for public-private partnership to provide the much-needed boost for the health sector in India to make medical services affordable and accessible to all.Addressing the webinar during the three-day ‘HEAL-2020’ when the awards were given away, Rajiv Gauba, Cabinet Secretary, Government of India, urged the private sector to come forward and join the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) movement. “Private sector hospitals, particularly the big groups, should come forward and join this platform,” he said.
In just two years after its launch, the PM-JAY movement has become a hugely successful platform for delivering tertiary care to some of the most vulnerable sections of the Indian population. “As a country, we have emerged from a state of total dependence on imports to being exporters of Covid-19 medical items. Today, we have 187 labs in the government sector and 749 private labs for Covid testing,” Gauba said.
However, the larger challenge of making healthcare affordable and accessible will continue even after the Covid-19 situation. “We need to improve our health infrastructure by coming up with innovative solutions, new approaches so that healthcare delivery can improve, especially at the last mile.”
C K Mishra, former secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said healthcare partnership between the private and public sector is the pooling of resources from both sides in taking the country ahead. “It is the government’s responsibility to create a platform to facilitate this.”