New Delhi: India’s healthcare challenge cannot be solved only by adding hospitals, advanced technology or insurance coverage; the country needs a people-centric model that builds the capacity of individuals and communities to care for their own health, said Dr. Abhay Bang, Chairman, SEARCH (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health).
Delivering the Special Guest Address, “In Search of a People-Centric Model of Healthcare”, at the 6th edition of ETHealthWorld’s Healthcare Leaders Summit, Bang said India’s central challenge is providing accessible and affordable care to 1.4 billion people spread across villages, towns, hamlets and urban settlements.
“The key word is people-centric. Not profit-centric. It is not even patient-centred,” he said.
Bang drew on four decades of work in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, where SEARCH developed community-based healthcare models for remote tribal populations with limited access to hospitals.
Taking care to where patients live
Bang said the fundamental question is not only how hospitals treat patients who reach them, but what happens to those who never reach a facility.
“Does our responsibility stop at serving those who reach us, or actually should we be even more responsible for those who cannot reach us?” he asked.
This thinking led SEARCH to develop home-based newborn care. Local women were trained to assess newborns, identify illness, maintain warmth and provide essential care within villages.
Bang said the intervention led to a sharp reduction in newborn mortality in the intervention area and was subsequently adapted into wider public-health programmes.
“With equipment on her shoulder, knowledge in her head, compassion in her heart and skills in her hands, she can become a mobile neonatal care unit,” he said.
Universal care requires universal capacity
Bang cautioned against India attempting to replicate healthcare systems built around expensive tertiary treatment.“India should not be chasing the US model of healthcare,” he said, arguing that a model dependent predominantly on hospital-based treatment and increasingly expensive technology cannot be universally applied in a lower-resource setting.
Instead, he called for stronger prevention, community participation and local capability, particularly as India faces growing non-communicable disease burdens.
“Universal care for everybody cannot be given by any agency,” Bang said. “It is only by empowering people, individuals, families and village communities that universal healthcare can be provided.”
For Bang, healthcare should ultimately reduce dependence rather than create it. His formulation was simple: “Health is freedom. Healthcare should make people independent. Healthcare should make people capable.”
The challenge for India, he concluded, is to use the efficiency and innovation of modern healthcare while anchoring its goals in social purpose—taking quality care closer to those who need it most.
