Global Health Progress

Global Health Progress recently released its report, Innovative Solutions to Improving Health in India, which highlights some of the public-private partnerships that are working to improve health and health access in the country.

Access to healthcare remains problematic in parts of India, especially in rural areas. Forty percent of the country’s primary healthcare centers are understaffed and fewer than one in five have a telephone connection. Nearly one million Indians die every year due to inadequate healthcare facilities and lack of access to healthcare. Without qualified health care professionals and fully equipped health facilities, programs to assist patients with medicines (both patented and unpatented) are of little use.

Additionally, chronic diseases are on the rise in India and infectious diseases continue to afflict Indian patients. India has the highest prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) in the world, 60 percent of the world’s heart disease, and malaria has staged a comeback after its near eradication in the 1960s. An estimated 40.9 million Indian patients suffer from diabetes, the highest number in the world, and 30 million people are infected with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV).

Global Health Progress is committed to working with leaders in India to strengthen collaboration with research-based biopharmaceutical companies and other global health leaders to reduce the burden of disease and strengthen access to healthcare and health systems in India.

Building sustainable, innovative solutions to this serious situation, however, calls for joint action among local leaders and diverse global stakeholders. Fortunately, Indian communities have successful and long-standing collaborations with biopharmaceutical companies and other international partners.

Partnerships Include:

• In collaboration with Direct Relief International and local Indian communities, the Abbott Fund provides funding to expand and improve maternal and child health services, to support a two-year training course for 40 traditional birth attendants, and to support the construction of a new health facility in the state of Maharashtra.
• Pfizer partners with US Agency for International Development (USAID), the CAP Foundation, and Arpana Research to address the shortage of local healthcare workers in India by training 300 young people from rural areas
• Sanofi-aventis supports a program to address major concerns among India’s most destitute families. The Father Ceyrac Association program was developed to solve health problems by offering access to existing services, and by helping health center staff better monitor patients.
• In collaboration with the Government of India’s Department of Pharmaceuticals (National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research), Genzyme is helping strengthen the country’s biotechnology capacity by providing Genzyme India Fellowships for excellence in biotechnology.
• GlaxoSmithKline is working with India’s Rural Health Development Organization to provide qualified medical practitioners and other health care workers, social workers, vocational training, health awareness programs, and medical treatment to 20,000 tribal people in 15 underserved villages.
• In 2006, Novartis launched an initiative with The Arogya Parivar project in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharshtra to address neglected health needs of rural populations by collaborating with local health professionals, pharmacy chains and NGOs to assist with health education and improve access to healthcare and medicine.

Read the full report here.