Health Budget must look beyond Covid mitigation

This entails addressing prevailing systemic deficiencies along with managing the added burden of Covid-19. India’s health sector requires a two-fold intervention by the government.

The extraordinary situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exposed the vulnerabilities of our fragile health-care system, demands an equally extraordinary intervention by the government. The expectation from the Union Budget 2021-22 is for the central government to lead from the front in the health sector.

Overall spending levels need to increase significantly and there is also a need to correct the growing sectoral imbalance with a bias in favour of tertiary facilities together with increasing neglect of primary health-care facilities. (PTI File Photo)

This entails addressing prevailing systemic deficiencies along with managing the added burden of Covid-19. India’s health sector requires a two-fold intervention by the government. Overall spending levels need to increase significantly and there is also a need to correct the growing sectoral imbalance with a bias in favour of tertiary facilities together with increasing neglect of primary health-care facilities.