Expansion of scope of care to address rising burden of NCDs, in addition to Maternal and Child Health services and Communicable Diseases
Availability of Essential state-of-art Lab Diagnostics & Drugs
Leverage Technology to improve access to care through Telemedicine
Promote holistic healthcare through integration of Indian heritage of AYUSH
Community outreach for Preventive and Promotive healthcare and improving utilisation of primary care services
Capacity building of Healthcare workers to deliver Comprehensive Primary Healthcare
Main streaming cost effective innovations
Good Governance to strengthen primary care provisions
▪ Majority of Indian population lacks access to quality primary healthcare services
▪ Underutilisation of Public Primary Healthcare facilities, as only 11.5% of rural and 4% of urban population accessed public primary health facilities for services other than Childbirth (NSSO 2004-14)
▪ Catastrophic health expenditures push nearly 5.5 crore Indians below the poverty line every year
▪ A wide urban-rural divide exists in distribution of health resources, as only 20% of healthcare resources- doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc., are located in rural areas, where more than 60% of India’s population lives
▪ Traditionally, primary healthcare in India has been focused on maternal and child health and common infectious diseases. However, India is now facing a dual burden of diseases. On top of an unfinished agenda of communicable diseases, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs/Lifestyle Diseases) now account for more than 65% of deaths in the country and nearly 2% loss of GDP every year due to premature deaths and DALYs
▪ Primary Healthcare is an effective gate-keeper for preventing advancement of diseases and related complications that requires more expensive treatment at secondary and tertiary medical facilities, which are already overburdened in India
▪ Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) follows a continuum of care approach, providing basic level of preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative care. It goes beyond the first contact care, and is expected to mediate a two-way referral support to higher-level facilities, ensure follow-up support for individual and population health interventions
▪ National Health Policy 2017 recommended strengthening delivery of Primary Health Care, through establishment of HWCs as the platform to deliver Comprehensive Primary Healthcare, moving away from selective primary healthcare
▪ HWCs are envisaged to deliver and expanded range of services, including free essential drugs and diagnostic services, close to the community provide
▪ In 2018, Govt. of India set a target of operationalizing 1.5 Lakh HWCs by 2022 as one of the two pillars of the Ayushman Bharat Programme. The ambitious target was achieved in December 2022
▪ At the time of announcement of Ayushman Bharat, the Govt. invited participation of the private sector in the form of NGOs, civil society, philanthropic organisation and CSR, to partner in these HWCs. Now that the 1.5 Lakh HWCs have been operationalised, partners must be involved for successful running and smooth operations of these HWCs
