RIGHT TO HEALTH

• Recently, the demand for the enactment of a legislation on the right to health has been revived in Rajasthan.
• The health activists have affirmed that the law would streamline medical services and guarantee the availability of essential facilities to citizens.

Important points:

• The right to health, as with other rights, includes both freedoms and entitlements:
• Freedoms include the right to control one’s health and body (for example, sexual and reproductive rights) and to be free from interference (for example, free from torture and non-consensual medical treatment and experimentation).
• Entitlements include the right to a system of health protection that gives everyone an equal opportunity to enjoy the highest attainable level of health.
• The people are entitled to the right to health and it puts a compulsion for the government to take steps toward this.
• Enables everyone to access the services and ensures that the quality of those services is good enough to improve the health of the people who receive them.
• Protects people from the financial consequences of paying for health services out of their own pockets and reduces the risk of people getting pushed into poverty.
• The existing public primary health care model in the country is limited in scope.
• Even where there is a well-functioning public primary health centre, only services related to pregnancy care, limited childcare and certain services related to national health programmes are provided.
• Expenditure on public health funding has been consistently low in India (approximately 1.3% of GDP).
• As per OECD India’s total out-of-pocket expenditure is around 2.3% of GDP.
• The government is committed to spend 2.5% of GDP on health by 2025.
• Sub-optimal health system. Due to this, it is challenging to tackle Non-communicable Diseases, which is all about prevention and early detection.
• It diminishes preparedness and effective management for new and emerging threats such as pandemic like Covid-19.

Way Forward

• The health should be shifted to the Concurrent list of the seventh schedule under the Constitution. Presently, ‘Health’ is under the State List.
• There is a need for a Developmental Finance Institution (DFI) dedicated to healthcare investments.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT