PHM-Exch> PHM India: Resolution adopted at Convention on “Universalisation of Health Care for All”

[Claudio Schuftan]

Resolution adopted at

Convention on “Universalisation of Health Care for All”



*New Delhi**, 28-29 November, 2012*



[Excerpts]



The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA, PHM India) believes that Public Health
services will have to be the backbone of any system that guarantees access
to quality health care services to all citizens of the country.



The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan’s position is that corporatization and
privatization is a remedy worse than the disease.



JSA notes that *diametrically opposing conceptions of ‘Universal health
care’ are contending today at global and national levels*. Authorities in
India are adopting a *framework that uncritically endorses and promotes the
existing private medical sector* including its high costs and
irrationality. This framework advocates handing over public funds, often
through the insurance route, to the private sector to expand ‘coverage’.
This needs to be countered by the *alternative vision of Health care for
all in the larger framework of ‘Health for all’*, which envisages a
transformation of the health system in a setting of broader social
transformations.



Greater public investment (at least up to 5% of GDP from the present measly
1%) and continuous and significant addition of human resources are needed.



In the present situation, two choices lie before us. *Either public
resources are  used to serve private benefit, OR private resources are used
to serve public benefit*. In most models today public funds are transferred
to the private medical sector without any effective regulation, governance
and accountability of this sector, and in a manner that would further
weaken the public health system. The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan strongly opposes
this approach.



An absolutely essential pre-requisite for any engagement with the private
sector is comprehensive regulation of the almost completely unregulated
private sector.



Utilization of large networked private care providers to provide insurance
outcomes leads to high costs and poor health outcomes. Continued reliance
on insurance schemes will lead to greater disadvantages for the working
classes of the country. We advocate that trade unions and peoples’
organisations need to be involved in a thorough scrutiny and critique of
all these schemes.



We demand that the Government dismantle the current publicly financed health
insurance schemes gradually and integrate them into an universal and
comprehensive system designed to provide Health Care for All.





JSA demands immediate and sustained steps to stop the manufacture and sale
of all irrational medicines and the operationalisation of regulatory
mechanisms for rational use of medicines.



Jan Swasthya Abhiyan demands that all essential drugs (348 at present)
including their combinations and dosage forms should be placed under price
control based on a cost based pricing formula.



The JSA demands that the Government stands firm in defense of health
safeguards in the Indian Patent Act and takes active measures to ensure
that Patents are not a barrier to medicines’ access.



Along with opposing privatisation and championing public systems, there is
a need to ‘reclaim’ public systems while they are strengthened and expanded.


Wider sections of people are questioning the existing manner of functioning
of the health system, and are beginning to expect qualitatively better ways
of organising health care. Hence the health movement takes up the challenge
of building broad based alliances with other social movements, to challenge
corporate oriented health care models, and to instead place a
public-centred system of ‘Health care for All’ squarely on the social
agenda, as a key step towards achieving the dream of ‘Health for All’.



The text of the full resolution can be had from  <asengupta at phmovement.org>
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