Health Budget 2023: Experts Call For Increased Allocation, Focus On Digitisation And Mental Health

Budget 2023: The pandemic has been a sort of an eyeopener for the government to prioritise India's healthcare segment and industry experts have called for a sharp increase in budgetary allocation.

Budget 2023: Who could have thought that a virus could bring the healthcare system of several countries to its knees. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a sort of an eyeopener for the government to prioritise India's healthcare segment, with industry experts calling for a sharp increase in budgetary allocation with special focus on preventive care, mental health and digitisation of the sector.
 
The 2023 Budget, the last full budget of the Narendra Modi 2.0 government before the Lok Sabha polls next year, will be presented in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.

In the last Budget, the government allocated around Rs 86,200 crore to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), a 16.5 per cent increase over the previous year. 

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Healthcare Industry Eyes Increase In Budgetary Allocation

Dr Ishwar Gilada, president, AIDS Society of India, said the Modi government should increase the budgetary allocation for the healthcare sector to 4 per cent of GDP.

"During the pandemic, we realised how healthcare preparedness is crucial. How we suffered due to lack of beds, ICU beds, ventilators and medical oxygen cylinders. The urban-rural divide also has to be bridged," Dr Gilada told ABP Live.

The Economic Survey had noted an increase in health expenditure to 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2021-22 against 1.8 per cent in 2020-21.

Dr Gilada predicted that the government is likely to allocate more funds for medical colleges, pandemic preparedness, expand the scope of Ayushman Bharat Yojana, which currently provides a health cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year, and tone up the rural health mission.

Digitisation To Make Healthcare Easily Accessible

Several experts ABP Live spoke to said the government should prioritise digitalisation of the healthcare sector by making it more customer-centric and easily accessible for all.

"The sector needs policies and incentives that encourage innovation in digital healthcare and promote partnerships between private and public sectors. While Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) has several elements aimed at transforming healthcare in the country, investments need to be made to further push adoption and also to encourage private players to participate with clearly defined delivery models," Siddhartha Nihalani, co-founder, Practo, told ABP Live.

Dr Shravan Subramanyam, managing director, Wipro GE Healthcare, said he expects further strengthening of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission along with implementation of cybersecurity and data protection policies in the upcoming Budget.

Experts also flagged that accessibility to quality healthcare has been a major issue in India, especially in Tier 2 and 3 cities, and expected the government to address this issue in the Budget.

"With rising incidences of both communicable and non-communicable diseases post Covid-19, further strengthening of infrastructure and bridging human resource and skill deficiencies for care area deliveries across Tier 2- Tier3 cities, semi-urban and rural areas focusing on promotion, prevention, therapy and post care is expected from this year's budget," Dr Subramanyam added.

Preventive Care And Diagnostics Sector

Kalyan Sivasailam, co-founder and CEO of 5C Network, a radiology interpretation platform, said the government should become more proactive on the diagnosis front as the "health of the nation lies in promoting preventive care".

"The OPD (or outpatient) insurance and most diagnoses today in India is paid out-of-pocket by patients. This leads to less number of diagnoses than what might be an opportunity to detect illness earlier. It also ensures that the radiodiagnosis market (such as X-ray, CT, or MRI scans) opens up by as much as a factor of ten," Sivasailam said.

Budget 2023: Attention To Mental Health

In 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Budget, mentioned there was increasing mental distress in the country and the pandemic had accentuated mental health problems in people of all ages.

She had announced plans to set up a National Tele-Mental Health programme in India to improve access to quality mental health counseling and care services.

Last year, about 0.8 per cent of the total health budget went towards mental health.

With WHO citing that one in every five Indians suffers from some kind of mental illness, this year too experts expect mental health to get more attention from the Centre.

"We expect this Budget to increase the allocation for mental health and further build resilience of national mental health infrastructure, as well as incentivize strengthening of the talent pool of counselors and mental health professionals to handle the massive mental health challenge we are facing," said Namit Chugh, investment lead of W Health Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm.

Dr Neerja Birla, founder and chairperson of MPower, an initiative that deals with mental health, said funding should be increased to make "outpatient mental health care services available at all primary health centres" and bolster community-based services to close the existing treatment gap of up to 83 per cent.