{"id":191993,"date":"2022-06-23T21:11:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T15:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=191993"},"modified":"2022-06-23T21:20:23","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T15:50:23","slug":"heal-the-nation-before-healing-the-rest-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/heal-the-nation-before-healing-the-rest-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Heal the nation before healing the rest of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>News:<\/strong> <strong>News<\/strong>: The Centre is developing an exhaustive <strong>online repository of all categories of health-care professionals in the country<\/strong>, under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission and the \u201cHeal by India\u201d initiative<\/p>\n<h5><strong>About the move<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>An online health-care professional repository will aid foreign stakeholders in finding their right choices.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What are the reasons for such a move?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>Soft power projection: <\/strong>In the post-COVID-19 era, the countries want to project soft power through healthcare services. In fact, the<strong> General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)<\/strong> aims to improve <strong>cross-border trade<\/strong> in medical and <strong>health-care services<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are the problems with creating an online repository of healthcare professionals?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The primary purpose of creating an online repository is to aid <strong>external stakeholders<\/strong>, viz. <strong>foreign employers<\/strong> and patients in finding a right Indian match for their respective needs.<\/p>\n<p>The move will worsen the out-migration of health-care professionals from the country. This will be done at the expense of the nation\u2019s own health interests.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal indicates <strong>liberalization<\/strong> in <strong>healthcare sector<\/strong>, which is a <strong>shunned principle<\/strong> in the health care sector.<\/p>\n<p>As per a study by WHO and the Public Health Foundation of India, India faces <strong>shortage of health-care personnel<\/strong>. India needs nearly <strong>two million<\/strong> more doctors and nursing professionals to attain the minimum threshold ratio of <strong>health-care professionals to the population.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>India has a <strong>skewed skill-mix<\/strong> of health professionals across a number of States. Their current pace of growth is unlikely to result in any significant improvement in the density or skill-mix of health-care professionals by 2030.<\/p>\n<p>There are health-care professionals who remain inactive and remain outside the labour force.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Other important measures taken by the government<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The Union health Budget 2022 has put focus on training different cadres of <strong>health-care personnel. <\/strong>The government will utilise the existing capacities at the <strong>distric<\/strong>t and <strong>sub-district levels<\/strong>. Such a move was recommended in the <strong>Fifteenth Finance Commission<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Way Forward<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The government should draw a distinction between <strong>exporting products<\/strong> such as vaccines and <strong>health-care professionals<\/strong> because the latter require a lot of investment in training and involve a <strong>net drain <\/strong>of resources from the native country.<\/p>\n<p>Further, India cannot afford to divert India\u2019s scarce national health-care resources to <strong>medical tourism<\/strong>. It will worsen already worsened <strong>health equity <\/strong>in developing countries such as India.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the right time to pursue <strong>medical tourism<\/strong> and <strong>out-migration<\/strong> because, at present, the country is reeling under acute shortages of healthcare professionals.<\/p>\n<p>An online registry of health-care professionals would be beneficial at the <strong>national and sub-national levels<\/strong>. The benefits are:<\/p>\n<p>(1) There are a lot of disparities in the availability, distribution, and skill mix of the health manpower.<\/p>\n<p>(2) This would strongly complement measures such as an <strong>integrated public health cadre<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>(3) The initiatives will also help to train, deploy and retain more local manpower.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>political<\/strong>, <strong>geopolitical expediency <\/strong>or<strong> cultural chauvinism<\/strong> should not be allowed to undercut <strong>national health interests<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article \u201cHeal the nation before healing the rest of the world\u201d published in the \u201cThe Hindu\u201d on 23<sup>rd<\/sup> June 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News: News: The Centre is developing an exhaustive online repository of all categories of health-care professionals in the country, under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission and the \u201cHeal by India\u201d initiative About the move An online health-care professional repository will aid foreign stakeholders in finding their right choices. What are the reasons for such a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/heal-the-nation-before-healing-the-rest-of-the-world\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Heal the nation before healing the rest of the world<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10498],"class_list":["post-191993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704931789},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}