Healthcare needs urgent attention and investment: Haldea

The investment deficit in the healthcare sector could be bridged through public private partnership (PPP) among other measures, a senior Planning Commission official said on Tuesday.

"In India, healthcare sector needs urgent attention and investment. One way to address the deficit is through public private partnership models," said Advisor on infrastructure to Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Gajendra Haldea.

He was speaking at a conference 'Nurturing Best Practices on PPPs in Healthcare', based on theme of public private partnership policy framework, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai.

"India is one of the largest countries in many sectors but our healthcare is in shambles. There's a lot to be done

and the need is to do it quickly," he said.

He added bailing out the sector could be achieved by emulating example of other sectors such as infrastructure.

"Infrastructure projects were in shambles once. But they have come up recently because there's a model framework in place and the government paid the attention that the sector demanded. We need to pick up lessons from infrastructure and see if it can be replicated in healthcare," Haldea said.

The largest challenge in doing so is to frame policy that can be customised with ease and replicated across the country, he added.

He further said: "In healthcare the main challenge is not the initial capital expenditure. It is actually funding the recurring costs. The government has to step in to ensure that the recurring cost can be subsidised or taken care of in some way".