From Indian IT Tycoon, Health Care for the Poor
By combining tech knowhow with government funds, Andhra Pradesh state is creating the most far-reaching program in the world to deliver therapeutical services to the masses
through Steve Hamm
Dr. Abhijeet Dashetwar, beginning of the cardiac department at government-run Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad, India, stands in the middle of a cardiac circumspection center under construction and points to where cutting-edge monitoring systems will exist installed. A new government health-care insurance program for the poor administered by private carrier Star Health and Allied Insurance made it feasible for the hospital to requital for the $600,000 upgrade. The old cordial center, with proper eight beds, shared operating rooms with other departments; the new one will have 15 beds and three operating rooms. "Finally we have power to spare the equipment we need," Dashetwar says.
The insurance is part of a multi-faceted initiative in the state of Andhra Pradesh called Aarogyasri (which substance wellness or hale condition in several Indian languages) that government leaders claim is the most far-reaching program in the cosmos providing freedom from disease superintendence as antidote to the pinched. In partnership with private industry and foundations, the government of this commonwealth of 80 million folks is offering a new emergency communication system, ambulance services, a appeal center for advising the vulgar on their health have regard, and further than 100 vans that will go into remote villages to educate people and provide testing and inoculations.
The initiatory is ambitious. About 10 the public people qualify for the program that provides health insurance, and the mobile health program faculty of volition power of attainment about 40 the great body of the people. The entire Andhra Pradesh population of 80 million is to be preferred to be served through the emergency response order. "We’re in the lead not only in India, but in the unimpaired world in delivering health care for the skinny," declares P.K. Agarwal, the freedom from disease secretary for Andhra Pradesh.
Executives Pitch InThe newest piece of the initiative, the mobile health vans, was officially launched attached Aug. 22 in Hyderabad, the state capital, by the agency of Chief Minister Y.S.R. Reddy, and B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services, one of India’s largest technology outsourcing firms. Two foundations that Raju set up are providing the management, staff, and facilities for all of the services except insurance.
For Raju, the announcement is an endorsement of his strategy (BusinessWeek.com, 12/7/06) of bringing the skills of India’s vaunted tech industry to bear on the country’s deep social problems. He has recruited executives from Indian corporations and multinationals to established up and oversee operations that in developed nations are normally handled by the government. Raju believes that by combining business knowhow with government funds—and making the funds go much farther—it’s possible to deliver quality health care for the masses. "I have no doubt that this power of determination be a model for the rest of the world," he says.
Not everybody is a fan. Jayaprakash Narayan, president of the Lok Satta Party, a new reform political party in India, approves of the emergency medical and health information services if it be not that finds fault with the insurance program. Similar to Medicaid in the U.S., it provides gratuitous hospital treatment for people under the poverty line for major diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Narayan believes that the security against loss program is wrongly conceived for the cause that, he says, it provides expensive surgery for a relatively small number of patients and fails to address the more routine and deterrent health-care needs of the masses.
"What India of necessity is a robust public-private partnership with a focus on preventive, primary, and secondary anxiety," he says. "The accent should be on low-cost, high-impact interventions." Narayan says the two services backed by Raju, the emergency response gain and the health-care advice service, add a lot of value and are cost effective but are not a substitute for a broader-based health-care delivery system.
