The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), in association with Technopak as the knowledge partners, will hold its two-day annual healthcare summit, sixth in a row, here from November 5, with the central theme of 'taking quality healthcare to the masses'.

Experts from the field, industry captains representing the healthcare sector, senior officials from different departments will be among those to lead the sessions and deliberations at the event.

Notwithstanding the marked improvement over the years, the healthcare infrastructure in the country (0.7 beds per 1000 population) still way behind as per the global average (2.5 beds per 1000 population. The healthcare improvements in smaller cities and rural India have not kept pace with those in metros and bigger cities. There still continues to be a major disparity between urban and rural healthcare indices. The bed to population in the metros on an average is two per thousand population whereas in the Tier II and Tier III towns this ratio lowers down to 0.2.The healthcare scenario in tier II, III cities is marked by shortage of organized delivery formats, shortage of adequate number of healthcare workforce. The absence or poor availability of healthcare compels the patients to travel long distances to access quality healthcare and as per an estimate more than 46 per cent of the patients travel over 100 kilo meters from small towns to seek proper medical care, according to a concept note for the event.

The event will discuss issues like making healthcare universally accessible through innovative modes and mechanisms of healthcare financing, devising ways to integrate the private players more through PPP models and standardizing the healthcare delivery. Discussions will be held on the right models to ascertain viability both from public and private sector point of view that need to be implanted in the smaller urban centres which also drain the majority of rural population.