BioSpectrum India Magazine November issue BioSpectrum India Magazine | Page 39

www.biospectrumindia.com
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November 2017
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BioSpectrum
BIOTalk
“Private sector, government need
to work together to make
healthcare accessible in rural India”
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Harish Pillai
COO, Indus Health Plus
For the first time National Heath
Policy is talking about the preventive
healthcare and wellness. From the
statement point of view, it is really
a commendable thing but now it has
to be translated on to the ground.
Harish Pillai COO, Indus Health Plus
in an interaction with BioSpectrum
India talks about why preventive
healthcare is the need of the hour and
how it can be successful.
How crucial is the role of preventive
healthcare as far as Non-communicable
diseases (NCDs) are concerned?
If you look at Indian statistics, one in four is a
cardiac patient and one in ten is a diabetic and cancer
is the third largest. World Health Organisation (WHO)
clearly says that one third of every cancer can be
prevented if detected at the early stage. Unfortunately
it is detected at the third stage or fourth stage with lot
of money being spent and losing a person as well. So
any form of preventive healthcare which helps to
detect a disease or helps to detect the NCD condition
at the early stage can be cured. If you detect a blockage
at 40%, it can be cured through allopathic or ayurvedic
medicine and reaching a stage of angioplasty can be
easily avoided which cost a lot. If large percentage of
Indian was doing pro-active exercise with some
lifestyle changes, this huge burden of NCDs would
definitely be coming down. We have 63 million people
suffering from cardiovascular diseases in this country,
70 million from diabetes and cancer kills 8-9 lakhs
people every year. These are the actual numbers
(actual number of people affected) and the cost of this
is even further.
We are losing billions of dollars of our economy in
tackling this problem. But unfortunately we don’t have
a solution to this yet. Neither the government nor the
private sector is able to give any solution. They both
have to work together in order to give a solution which
can affect the large masses of people.
If you go by the IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and
Development Authority of India) 2014 report, there
are around 30,000 hospitals in the country out of
which 24,000 are there in the private sector. These
hospitals are catering to curative. They are also doing
service to preventive but mostly there focus would be
on curative because the demand supply gap is so huge.
Indus decided to go into the preventive healthcare
in 2000 when one of our founder lost her father due
to cancer. The family suffered for eight months and
also lost the person. So that was the trigger point
for starting this company. That is where our mission
prevention started.
Where do you think is the gap as far as
preventive healthcare is concerned?
I already mentioned that huge number of people in
India are suffering from Cardiovascular or diabetes or
cancer. The health is a state subject but funds and
policies are dictated by the centre. Centre can dictate a
policy but who will execute this policy on the ground?
The state government will have to provide a framework
and there private sector catering the 80% healthcare
will have to have a big role to play in execution.