The Tamilnadu State Government has initiated to develop a framework to allow active participation of private sector in healthcare delivery systems in the state.

According to Tamilnadu Minister for Health and Family Welfare, N.Thalaivi Sundaram, the move is to evolve a better healthcare infrastructure for the state and to enable more poor people benefit from the public-private joint healthcare initiatives.

Inaugurating a two-day workshop on ‘Promoting public-private partnership in health delivery systems’ in Chennai, he said the state administration was keen on upgrading the quality of critical care services provided at the primary health centres, and the participation of private sector could give a fillip to the initiatives. For this, the Government was planning to outsource the services of private sector, said the minister.

According to Girija Vaidyanathan, the workshop would act as a platform to address the concerns of the private and public healthcare providers as a prelude to developing the framework of public-private sector participation, as private sector has lots of apprehension about the complexity and supervision imposed by the Government machinery.

So far, private participation was restricted to certain segments and programmes like fighting tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS etc., and it had provided fruitful results and made a marginal difference in healthcare delivery in the state, noted Girija Vaidyanathan.

Participating in the workshop, Supriya Sahu, Joint Secretary, Health, said the private-public initiative in health delivery system would bring in a paradigm shift, and there was need for a sustained intervention from the public sector. She noted that Tamilnadu has a long history of voluntary support, and that was crucial in the success of leprosy control, tuberculosis treatment, immunization projects etc.

Top level medical practitioners, NGOs, hospital heads, economists, Government officials etc. are participating in the workshop.