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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Health bill may deny the poor free care by Savita Verma

Health bill may deny the poor free care by Savita Verma

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published Published on Feb 22, 2010   modified Modified on Feb 22, 2010

The Centre has drafted a health bill to ensure the right to health. However, health experts feel the bill will, instead, legitimise denial of health services to the poor.

The Draft National Health Bill 2009 was prepared on the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission to recognise and operationalise the right to healthcare. The demand for such a right was led by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian chapter of the global Public Health Movement.

The bill is important as India's health indicators are worse than its poorer neighbours. The country has one of the lowest public spendings on healthcare. While the UPA government had committed to increase the spending to two-three per cent of the GDP, the increase has been from 0.96 per cent to 1.05 per cent. This places India in the league of Burundi, Sudan and Myanmar.

India currently does not have any law to ensure healthcare to its people. The UK, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the developed nations have such laws.

The bill is ambiguous on providing universal and free healthcare, experts said. It talks of providing free access to healthcare only for the vulnerable and marginalised. By this, the bill legitimises a system in which the poor can't access free healthcare if they don't fall under the targeted sections.

Those outside the purview of the targeted sections will have to cough up a fee to utilise these services. The fee will have to be "affordable", experts said.

"Targeting vulnerable groups perpetuates and condones vulnerability rather than addressing the issue. Targeting programmes are no substitute for universal healthcare," Dr K. Srinath Reddy from the Public Health Foundation of India, said.

However, the bill can be used to generate demand for higher health spending. The concept can also be used to demand changes in other sectors, the experts added. For example, it is known that wider income disparity leads to an adverse impact on health - universal entitlement to healthcare can be used to file public interest litigations to demand an increase in minimum wages and decrease the income gap.

Even a trade policy which would have an adverse impact on the right to health can be challenged if there is such a law, Reddy said.

"It is a known fact that a universal system reaches more marginalised people. The public distribution system collapsed as it was directed," Biraj Patnaik, who played a leading role in the Right to Food campaign, said.

The bill also fails to prevent public health services being privatised. "It should assert the role of public sector health services. But, it does not talk about strengthening of the services," Colin Gonsalves, a human rights activist, said.


India Today, 22 February, 2010, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/85102/LATEST%20HEADLINES/Health+bill+may+deny+the+poor+free+care.html
 

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