Tuesday, March 28 2006 14:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today (Mar 28, 2006) launched an ambitious initiative to substantially strengthen the public health system in the country, regretting that the record of the private sector in health care provisioning has 'not been very good'.

Noting that the private sector was the 'dominant' source of health care provisioning in the country, he said "On the whole, the record of the private sector in health care provisioning in India has not been very good."

"We are all familiar with reports of unethical practices, including commissions given in return for referral and diagnostic work. We must have appropriate measures to tackle this," he said.

Singh was launching the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), a public-private initiative, which was first of its kind innovative partnership, in the health sector which seeks to establish five world class public health institutes to train thousands of professionals in the field annually.

With Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen by his side, Singh said setting up of the Foundation presented an opportunity to develop innovative models of such partnership in social sector programmes.

"Such partnership can help blend the commitment of the government with operational efficiency of not-for-profit private groups", he said citing the examples of Dr Devi Shetty's Hospitals and Dr V Shantha's Cancer Institute in Chennai.

Hoping that the public health professionals would in turn help transform the state of public health services, he said that in many areas of social development, the problem was not a lack of ideas, but on the contrary, institutions have failed to deliver.

Emphasising the importance in investing in capacity- building in existing public health institutions, Singh said there was a need to revitalize and strengthen departments of social and preventive medicine in the medical colleges.

"We have a rich legacy in this area, but of late, we have neglected this aspect," he said.

Noting that the country was blessed with good quality human resources in the area of clinical management but "We woefully lack public health managers", he said that his government has recently asked the Planning Commission to make an assessment of the scenario of human resources for health.

"While states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat might have acceptable standards, there were several states which did not have even the minimum number of institutions to turn out support staff for healthcare, " he said.

Expressing concern over skewed distribution of specializations among doctors, Singh said that the country needed public health professionals equipped with expertise and managerial skills to design and deliver health programmes at the national level and down to the village level.

The Prime Minister said that the country also faced the possibility of becoming a global destination for cheap and high quality healthcare. The demographic contrast between a young India and an ageing world gave us an opportunity to train professionals at different levels to meet the needs ofthe emerging global care industry.