Need to focus more on achieving health equality in India: Poonam Muttreja

From the Ayushman Bharat scheme to digital health innovations, India has achieved significant milestones in the health sector in the last five years, and now the focus must shift to achieving equality, said Poonam Mutreja, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India.

“We’ve witnessed significant initiatives in India in the health sector. From the implementation of the Ayushman Bharat scheme, providing health insurance to millions expanded the reach of the health and wellness centres to address the primary health care needs of local communities, to digital health innovations,” Poonam told. Despite the progress made, challenges remain.

“We are still a long way away from achieving universal health coverage,” she said, citing the low health expenditure in the budget, which is below the target of 2.5 per cent of the GDP, as recommended by the National Health Policy of 2017. The expert called on the need to strengthen the country’s primary health system and raise investment in health infrastructure while increasingly embracing advanced technologies like telemedicine and AI. “The Covid-19 pandemic also laid bare the inefficiency of our public health system, highlighting the need to reimagine the health system and improve the quality of services,” said the public health expert, adding that “there is a lot of potential and promise.”

“We need an even greater emphasis on strengthening our primary health care system..and we must address the social determinants of health, such as age at marriage, girls’ education, nutrition, sanitation,” said Poonam, adding that these “play a critical role in achieving health equality.” She also called for addressing gender gaps and ensuring male engagement in health access and outcome, fixing human resource challenges in the health system. “This includes recruitment, better working conditions for our healthcare workers, especially those on the front lines, such as ASHAs and ANMs, who are the backbone of the health systems,” Poonam said.