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“All health-related aspects must come under the ambit of single department”
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New Delhi, June 28, 2019:
As the nation gears up for the first set of policies to be announced by the new government, it remains to be seen what the powers-that-be have in store for India’s healthcare sector. Making simple, accessible, and affordable healthcare a reality is the need of the hour as is the idea of ensuring that the concept of One Health turns into a reality in the country.
In most nations world over, inter-sectoral coordination has been established by the concerned governments, to consult with each other, share their knowledge, and provide effective and efficient means to control emergence of such diseases as per protocols set by the World Health Organization under their one health programme.
Speaking about this, Padma Shri Awardee, Dr KK Aggarwal, President, HCFI, said, “The time has come for health professionals, environmentalists, and agriculture professionals to work collaboratively and develop solutions to various problems which are increasing with each passing year. Although the One Health programme is in place in India, it does not seem to be getting the right results due to different administrative and ministerial controls. It has often been seen that allocation of budgets are spread over different ministries looking after the human, animal, agriculture, and environmental health programmes.”
One Health is a concept that incorporates human, animal, plant, and environmental health (air, water, earth) under one roof. It recognizes that the health of people is connected to the health of animals, plants and the environment.
Adding further, Dr Aggarwal, who is also the Group Editor-in-Chief of IJCP, said, “At present, the ministries of health, agriculture, rural development, environment, road transport, climate change, earth sciences, water, Women and child development, Swatch Bharat Program, ICMR, ICAR, IARI, etc., are looking after their respective matters of human concern.”
The Heart Care Foundation of India (HCFI would request the government to consider the following while framing guidelines for the budget.
- Bring administrative and budgetary control of all such schemes of all segments that deal with health of humans, animals, environment-climate change, agriculture production, and disease control, under one roof namely “One health Program”. This will enable the scientists working in these sectors independently on prevention and control of diseases that have potential to shift their host from one sector to other, and these can be better researched and controlled.
- Allocate common budget or link these budgets for these programmes so that more intersectoral cooperation and sharing of knowledge takes place. Besides, overlapping of programmes in these ministries will also go away to a large extent and thus would also result in more saving of financial outflow.
- Provide emergent care services free of cost or reimbursed to the private sector by the government.
