IPSI launched its inaugural issue of Primary Healthcare Matters series on World Health Day 2024. Through this series we aim to inform on innovations and best practices in primary health care in India.
The Government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat (AB) scheme with a strategic focus on Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC). The delivery of high-quality primary health care services requires health facility staff to possess specific primary care and public health competencies. To identify current and future training needs we undertook a training needs assessment among primary healthcare providers in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya and Odisha.
Bottom-up decision making requires free space to think and prioritize. To facilitate this, a workshop was conducted using the human-centered design approach with district level managers and health facility staff responsible for improving the quality of care in public health facilities in Kalahandi, Odisha. Human-centered design approaches are increasingly being used in health research settings globally, but practical experiences of using such tools have been less documented. In this practice note, we outline the steps followed in the human-centered design workshop, the types of solutions developed by the implementers, and key insights that emerged.
The National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) certification is an important government initiative to improve and maintain quality standards at public sector health facilities in India. Health facilities are assessed through a set of comprehensive, pre-defined standards derived from global best practices. However, achieving and maintaining certification is an ongoing challenge for many health facilities in India. Bhavnagar district in Gujarat has managed to achieve high levels of primary health care facility certification within a relatively short time. In this note, we discuss the reasons for this success.
Previous Issue
Krishna D. Rao
Director IPSI, and Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Pandemics are highly inequitable. They impose a disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality on countries and people at the lower end of the income distribution. Moreover, as in the case of COVID-19, control efforts through social distancing and population lockdowns have brought additional deprivations on vulnerable populations. In low- and middle- income countries (LMIC) and elsewhere, the slowdown in economic activity has resulted in rapidly rising unemployment, particularly in the informal sector, where the majority of workers are employed and without adequate social safety nets. The effects of COVID-19 and population lockdowns will have short and long term effects on health, human capital, and income of vulnerable populations. It is now increasingly clear that economically vulnerable groups are being forced to sacrifice disproportionately more for the better health of society. To mitigate the deprivation due to COVID-19 it is necessary for government safety net programs to provide long term support focused on specific vulnerable populations.
Dr. Baridalyne Nongkynrih, Dr. Mohan Bairwa
Centre for Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
Globally, NCDs are responsible for about 70% of all deaths, resulting in nearly 15 million “premature” deaths globally (i.e., deaths between the ages of 30 and 69 years). The majority of these deaths at 85% occur in in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). NCDs (cancer, CVD, CRD, diabetes and mental health – can result in a cumulative output loss of US$ 47 trillion over the period 2011-2030 i.e. nearly 75% of the global GDP in 2010. CVDs and mental health diseases are the two main contributors to the global economic burden of NCDs. In India and other South-East Asian countries, NCDs affect a relatively younger population as compared to the western countries.
Harsha Joshi
Program Officer, India Primary Health Care Support Initiative (IPSI)
The year 2020 brought global attention to public health and health systems. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world are prioritizing the health sector and its resource requirements. In India, recent developments such as the 15th Finance Commission (FC) report, and the Union Budget 2021-22 indicate increased government attention to the health sector. Importantly, there is a renewed focus primary health care reforms and increased financing for primary health care.