Prevention precedes care

Today's healthcare system is too complex and elaborate. If we measure it by the share size of the system – number of hospitals, huge population it caters to, layered procedures of testing, diagnosis, consultation and follow up -  it is enormous. And if we factor in the ever growing research and the resultant changes in the healthcare delivery, it becomes a dizzying picture. While it has given us better and more effective care for disease, it has come with its own negative side. The pressure it has brought to the economic side of individuals and families is devastating.

We have many stories where the disease didn't prove as fatal as the drain of resources it entailed. Ideally, the healthcare should be the exclusive domain of the government, but in our part of the world the government doesn't have the required capacity to cover all people, and provide the services bearing all costs itself. One must not undermine the government's initiative to provide basic insurance cover to all families, but the kind of costs that are now involved in getting he tests done, it goes well beyond the cover provided in that insurance scheme.

The government hospitals, despite having good infrastructure cannot accommodate all. It is beyond their capacity to treat all. In this scenario, we need a private sector. The emergence of private health sector is a mixed bag. While it compliments the government healthcare infrastructure and services, it sets in a dynamic where the economic health of people takes a hit.

Till the time we have a general, large scale improvement in our economy, so that most people can afford private services, or till the time health insurance presence in our society becomes wide and deep, we will have the stories of ruin. One thing that can be a game changer in this situation, and otherwise also, is the preventive healthcare.

If the government, with all its relvant departments, upscale the activities in this regard, we can really make a difference. If awareness campaigns around food habits, life style, early detection and conservative treatment are scaled up, its impact in some time can be grand. That is the easiest, and the best way, to improve healthcare in any population. It costs less, and it offers more.