Healthcare Service Provision Seen through Villager’s Lenses

Abstract

Social health protection is an essential part of the welfare policy framework. This article discusses twocomponents of Social health protection – direct provision of health care services by the governmentand NGOs; and micro health insurance for covering catastrophic health expenditures. The discussionsections start with the components of direct healthcare service provision at the village level: healthcarecenters, free medicines, health camps, awareness campaigns and health talks and referral services. Thearticle shows that if done properly, all these components are well appreciated by the villagers. They areseen to have no urge to use private facilities, if good facilities established by govt/NGO exist. NSS alsoshows that there is higher utilization of government health services than before.The article shows that quality and affordable healthcare leads to better income, better school attendance,reduction in out of pocket expenditures and minimal dependence on informal health workers. However,the current healthcare service situation in rural India leaves much to be desired. There are problems ofinfrastructure, manpower, training, availability of consumables, and hence lack of trust in governmentservices.Reimbursement of health expenses can address some of these issues but the articles whos that theretoo, the progress is slow and not upto the mark yet. Therefore it is concluded that health care services inIndia need to be upgraded starting from providing very basic facilities like water and electricity.