Healthcare revolution waiting to happen: Kamal Nath

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Healthcare revolution waiting to happen: Kamal Nath

Facilitating capital formation of $100 bn over next 20 years and creating qualified manpower biggest challenge for the Healthcare sector : CII Technopak Study

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The Union minister for commerce and Industry, Mr Kamal Nath, said a healthcare revolution is waiting to happen in the country and it assumes high priority for all the stakeholders with the sheer number of people requiring healthcare facilities. He said this while addressing the special plenary session on "Empowering India's Healthcare Infrastructure - Strategic Investment and Partnership," organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with India Healthcare Foundation here on Wednesday.

On the investment required to power India's healthcare, Mr Kamal Nath said India is not short of funds with many global investors waiting to invest in the country. What is needed is a platform or a forum to chanelise these investments. He urged the Services Export Promotion Council to include healthcare and medical tourism in its ambit and initiate an interface with the government to work out a private-public partnership model to fund healthcare infrastructure.

Mr Kamal Nath also launched the Brand Healthcare film, which offers a captivating and panoramic view of the changing face of Indian healthcare and the opportunity it represents both within the country and abroad. This film has been produced by the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the CII.

Technopak Advisors prepared a study "Transforming Indian Healthcare - Agenda for Action" on behalf of CII. Presented an overview on the infrastructure challenges that needs to be addressed, Mr Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak said the greatest challenge was facilitating capital formation of $100 billion over the next 20 years, at the rate of about $50 billion per year. He said this can happen only when there are adequate returns on the investment for the investors. Another challenge is creating qualified manpower - doctors, nurses technicians and others in numbers that are almost 7-fold more per year that the present capacity ( a gap of almost 1.4 million doctors and over 3 million nurses by 2017.).

Mr Singhal said "Weak physical infrastructure, poor quality education and inaccessible and unaffordable healthcare can impact India's high GDP growth." The key drivers of India's healthcare sector are growing population, rise in income levels, urbanization, increasing burden of chronic diseases and a growing and ageing population, Mr Singhal said.

Listing the infrastructure needs, Mr Singhal said India need to add two million beds by 2027 from 1.1 million beds in 2007; An investment of $82 billion is required to make up for the backlog; About $460 billion is required to catch up with the demographic shift and $500 billion is required to meet the needs of an ageing population.

"We must have a pragmatic FDI policy framework to encourage the private sector to invest in healthcare," he said and added that public spending has to go up from 1.3% of GDP to 3% of the GDP with focus on public health and disease prevention schemes.

In his concluding remarks, D Prathap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group and Chairman, CII National Committee on Healthcare, said the Indian healthcare industry was poised to grow into trillion-dollar industry and become the largest industry in the world. He asked all the stakeholders to work together to realize this dream. 

Sourced From: Confederation of Indian Industry