An inclusive healthcare delivery system should be in place to cater people of all strata with accessible, affordable and cost efficient medical facilities, said I A Kundan, Additional Commissioner, Western Suburbs, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, while delivering a speech at Urban Healthcare Summit, Mumbai recently.

“There are various aspects which determine delivery of urban health. While looking into urban health of any corporations, we need to take into consideration various factors. We needs to check whether the service delivery is inclusive, whether it is including all the beneficiaries in fair and justifiable manner or are some beneficiaries not getting included in the system,” she said.

Kundan highlighted various aspects which could determine outcome of an ideal healthcare delivery system.

Healthcare delivery system must address out-of-pocket expenditure

“Other important dimension of healthcare delivery mechanism is whether we are able to provide all the services related to diagnostics or therapeutics to people of the area and whether it is inclusive or not. Insurance that was expected to reach lower rung of the society whether it has percolated down or not,” she said at the conclave.

Third aspect is whether the latest interventions are anyway affecting out-of-pocket expenditure of the people. Whether we are coming up with system which will help us to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure?

Both Urban and rural healthcare need to be strengthened

If we understand the demography of Mumbai, largest number of population is slum dwellers, who don’t have access of medical facilities. It’s a misnomer that in a city accessibility to healthcare is better than rural areas. We have to understand that emphasis till now was always in strengthening the healthcare delivery institutions in rural area.

The mindset was healthcare delivery mechanism needs to strengthen in rural areas which has its own merit but increasing migration to the cities and huge population load have forced everyone including  policymakers to think of a robust urban healthcare delivery mechanism for urban poor.

MCGM making a big strides towards Universal Healthcare System

Urban poor which constitutes 50-60 percent slum dwellers, are marginalised and have pushed out of the health delivery mechanism.  With the dynamic leadership of Municipal Commissioner and support of local leadership including Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has achieved all inclusive system, which will be able to give a very good start towards Universal Healthcare System.  I appeal all healthcare luminaries to give their suggestions, share ideas on how we can evolve our healthcare delivery system.

 

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