Health, education road map needed in Karnataka

The Karnataka Health Vision Group released its report titled ‘Advancing People’s health in Karnataka: Vision for Progress’ on Wednesday. It is a roadmap for health care for the next 25 years. It recommends an increase in the state’s investment in health care to 8% of the gross domestic product by 2025 from 4.7% in 2019. It focuses on better intervention, integration, implementation, innovation and investment. It also focuses on the three domains of strengthening public health systems, implementing health programmes and identifying emerging public health topics. The goals for 2030 and beyond include increasing the percentage of households covered by health schemes or health insurance and spending on health and social protection. Other goals include reducing undernutrition among children, anaemia among pregnant women and children under five, and the incidence of TB and HIV/AIDS.

However, despite a promising report for the future of the health sector, it leaves many aspects unattended. It includes the common person’s vulnerability to a highly corporate world of hospitals, the onslaught of which is forcing the closure of nursing homes which were affordable and accessible to the general public. It fails to deal with the high medical education costs, discouraging young graduate doctors from serving in rural areas. They prefer working in urban-centred corporate hospitals to be able to repay substantial education loans. It does not address the issue of how hospitals play on insurance to drive patients through unwanted tests, nor does it touch upon the various nexuses in the medical world that subject patients and families to untold financial miseries outside of insurance coverage. 

Implementing the vision group’s recommendations will hold no meaning if prevailing malpractices in the medical field are allowed to continue in the background of increased investments and “corporatisation” of hospitals. The ruling disposition should understand the symbiotic nature of health and education, and structure future road maps by taking both into account simultaneously, not independently as has been done. This will ensure people’s welfare, happiness and better work productivity.