Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated state-of-the-art Amrita Hospital at Faridabad on 24 August 2022.This hospital is a blend of modernity and spirituality and will become a medium of accessible and affordable treatment for needy patients. India is a nation where treatment is a service, wellness is a charity. Where health and spirituality, both are related to each other. We have medical science as a Veda. We have also given the name of Ayurveda to our medical science. India never allowed its spiritual and service legacy to go into oblivion even during the difficult period of slavery, for centuries.
The PPP model is called Public-Private Partnership but I also see it as ‘Paraspar Prayas’ (mutual effort)”, the PM said, during his address. In fact, transforming healthcare has been one of the key milestones of the Modi government.
For instance, the government’s e-Sanjeevani telemedicine service has been integrated with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).ABDM aims to build digital highways to bridge the gaps in existing digital health solutions in India. The integration of e-Sanjeevani with ABDM is one such example where the 23 crore ABHA holders can link and store their health records created via e-Sanjeevani, in the health lockers of their choice. They can also share their previously linked health records with doctors on e-Sanjeevani, making the entire consultation process paperless.
The first one is e-Sanjeevani Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Center (AB-HWC), a doctor-to-doctor telemedicine service through which the beneficiaries visiting a health and wellness center can virtually connect to doctors in the hub that could be at a tertiary healthcare facility, a hospital or a medical college. This enables the government to provide general and specialised health services in rural areas and to isolated communities. The second variant, e-Sanjeevani OPD, is serving patients across the country by connecting them directly to doctors from the comforts of their homes. Both e-Sanjeevani AB-HWC and e-Sanjeevani OPD have been integrated with the ABDM platform. Currently, there are 867 active integrators in the ABDM sandbox. Out of these, 40 digital health applications have completed their ABDM integration. Together, these health tech services are building a robust, interoperable and inclusive digital health ecosystem for the country.
The Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission, with an outlay of Rs 64,000 crore over the next five years, will take India’s public health facilities and infrastructure to new heights. These centers would also conduct yoga classes for wellness twice a week. Kids would be vaccinated and pregnant women’s health conditions would be monitored. These would have test facilities for non-communicable diseases.
These centers would also have facilities for screening of oral cancer, cervical cancer and breast cancer. Till date, over 10 crore oral cancer tests, over 3 crore cervical cancer tests and over 5 crore breast cancer tests have already been conducted, free of cost, by the Modi government.
When the BJP led NDA government came to power in 2014, the budget for the health sector was only Rs 33,000 crore, which has since, increased substantially to Rs 83,000 crore in FY23. The FY22 healthcare budget was Rs 71,269 crore. Over 23 crore Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) numbers, which are 14-digit health Ids, have been created so far, with Andhra Pradesh generating the highest at 3.21 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The ABHA number is a 14-digit Id that allows users to save their health records and medical investigations online. The data can be accessed and shared online by healthcare providers across the country. The creation of ABHA number is voluntary. Till date under Ayushman Bharat,over 3.65 crore hospital admissions have happened at a cost of over Rs 43,000 crore to the central exchequer. Interestingly, the Modi government has provided 35 lakh ‘Ayushman’ health cards to CAPF personnel and their families and they can now avail cashless treatment at 24,000 empanelled hospitals across the country, with no upper limit on expenditure.
Ayushman Bharat (AB) is an attempt to move from a selective approach to health care to deliver a comprehensive range of services spanning preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative care. It has two components which are complementary to each other. Under its first component, 150,000 Health & Wellness Centers (AB-HWCs) are being created to deliver Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC), that is universal and free to users, with a focus on wellness and the delivery of an expanded range of services closer to the community. The second component is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) which provides health insurance cover of Rs 5 lakhs per year to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families for seeking secondary and tertiary care.
HWCs are delivering an expanded range of services that go beyond maternal and child health care services,to include eye and ENT care, mental health and first level care for emergencies and trauma , including free essential drugs and diagnostic services. In fact, one of the key reasons why the world’s largest vaccine drive under the Modi government has also turned out to be the world’s fastest vaccination drive, is the critical role played by the Ayushman Bharat scheme, which was launched in September 2018 and in barely four years, has transformed India’s healthcare related landscape. Today, over 211 Covid doses have been administered in India, with over 4 crore people getting their 1st dose in the 12-14 years’ age group, while over 6 crore people have got their 1st dose in the 15-18 years’ age bracket. What is more, over 15 crore precaution doses have been given and over 88.50 crore Covid tests have been conducted. The recovery rate in India is 98.62%, the daily and weekly positivity rates are less than 3% each, while the active caseload is only 0.19%. Unarguably, India under the astute leadership of PM Modi has shown to the world how a global pandemic of gargantuan proportions can be deftly handled. The key in doing that is last mile delivery and indeed, digitisation of the Ayushman Bharat apparatus has hastened the pace of last mile delivery, making healthcare solutions affordable and accessible.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP and the Bestselling Author of ‘The Modi Gambit’.