Reconstructing the Critically Damaged Health Service System of the Country

Abstract

India's ruling class, in association with international agencies, bureaucrats, and business interests, has formed a powerful syndicate that has been imposing its will on the country to the detriment of public health. After gaining independence, India developed a body of knowledge suited to its social, cultural, economic, and epidemiological conditions. This led to an alternative approach to public health education, practice, and research that foreshadowed the Alma Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care of 1978. In the early 1980s, global power shifts undermined national and international commitment to the Declaration. Wealthy countries' response to the declaration of self-reliance by economically disadvantaged countries was swift: an effort to suppress the Declaration's ideals in favor of an unscientific, market-driven agenda. As a result, public health practice in India virtually disappeared. Responding to growing restiveness among a population in need, political leaders have launched the foredoomed National Rural Health Mission and pursued an American brand of public health through the Public Health Foundation of India. Reconstructing the damaged public health system will require pressure on the syndicate to ensure India's public health heritage will be used to effectively transfer "People's health in people's hands" according to the guidelines set down at Alma Ata.