India’s efforts to make medicines affordable for citizens

This was published in The Better India on June 13 2017. Here is the link, and below is an extract:

“Looking at the bigger picture, it is important that India does not stop here, but that we aim for prioritizing and making, at the soonest, all healthcare services (and not just generic medicines) accessible and affordable for all the citizens of the country. Dr Gadre warns that Jan Aushadhi and related schemes are for now more like “standalone policy initiatives not embedded in the larger context of India’s poor public health system”. In a major analysis done a few months back, countries were ranked as per their performance with respect to important health-related indicators like prevalence of stunting in children, maternal health, tuberculosis, etc. India ranked 143 out of 188 countries, coming just behind Ghana and Comoros. Evidently, we need far more political and civil society commitment to health than we are investing in right now. As a signatory to the United Nations’ ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, India has committed itself to achieving Universal Health Coverage, that is, all citizens enjoying access to health services of sufficient quality without suffering from financial hardship. We hope to see further governmental commitments and sincere implementations of policies which will help us reach that crucial goal.”