“When I was screeching due to unbearable pain, doctor ma’am got irritated and slapped me in the face”
Primary healthcare centres serve as the backbone of public health services in cities across India, including Delhi. These centres play a critical role in providing essential healthcare services to residents, serving as the first point of contact for medical assistance. However, despite efforts to improve quality and care, challenges persist in providing adequate healthcare services.
Based on suggestions made by the Bhore Committee in 1946, India’s healthcare system has been built on the foundations of primary care. Over the years, various state programmes have promised a healthcare model meant to reduce Out-Of-Pocket expenditure and improve the overall quality and accessibility of public healthcare. Despite such frequent proclamations, the promises of accessible and quality healthcare remained unfulfilled, evidenced by a meagre 0.7 doctors per 1000 of the population, dissatisfactory infrastructure, and overworked staff.
As this article offers insights from an area served by a primary health centre from the Indian capital, it does not represent the broader healthcare landscape in India which is essentially in worse shape. While urban healthcare is leagues ahead of rural India in terms of infrastructure and the availability of specialists, it still fails to adequately meet all the needs of its patients.
A 2nd year Resident specialising in Community Medicine who wishes to be anonymous (due to a strange and invasive practice of university faculty monitoring their students on the internet) outlines some of the major issues in Delhi’s health system. “There is a lack of proper education in the public health sector, even the best degrees are not comprehensive enough to equip us in tackling systemic problems.” has also observed how primary health providers are burdened with a constant influx of patients, overwhelming administrative work, and the lack of essential medication at the facility.
Residents of the area under the care of the PHC are mostly daily-wage workers who mostly rely on the health centre for reactive care, good preventive care is still a far-fetched dream. This isn’t entirely the fault of the healthcare system, as PHC’s aren’t unwilling to provide preventive care, but most patients who seek care at PHC’s aren’t educated about the importance of preventive care. Making greater provisions for propagating the value of preventive care could largely contribute to the reduction of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
While the Indian healthcare system has made great strides in eradicating diseases such as polio and smallpox through mass vaccinations, lifestyle diseases have been on the rise. According to the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research, the estimated percentage of deaths due to Non-Communicable diseases has shot up from 37.09% in 1990 to 61.8% in 2016.
