With elections round the corner and political parties getting busy with thrashing out manifestos, a group of public interest groups have prepared a `people's health manifesto' seeking to draw the attention of the parties in the fray for power.

Under the aegis of the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, scores of activist groups have called for bringing in a national health act to ensure the right to comprehensive, quality healthcare at the public expenses to all the people. They have demanded a universal healthcare coverage scheme to ensure treatment of the needy with public funds.

The Act must ensure that all persons approaching any clinical establishment including a private establishment would enjoy legally enshrined rights. These should include the right to the display of rates, non-discrimination and minimum standards and management guidelines. It must restrict unethical and unlawful practices, and ensure entitlements of the people to key health determinants including nutrition, clean drinking water and a healthy environment, the manifesto released here recently said.

The public groups said there was a huge gap between the promises and deliveries under the National Rural Health Mission and hence needed increased allocation to meet the demands. "The NRHM had envisaged expenditure of Rs 55,000 crore per year by 2012 but for past two to three years it has stagnated at about Rs 10,000-12,000 crore per year," the manifesto said. Besides, the need of the hour is to improve the infrastructure at all levels in the public healthcare system, the leaders of Abhiyan said, while urging the political parties to take note of these issues.

The manifesto suggests a national ban on any kind of private practice by full-time medical care providers in the public health system. And, all public-private partnerships must be governed by a regulatory policy framework. On gender and health, the manifesto suggests the abolition of all coercive laws, policies and practices that violate the reproductive and democratic rights of women, including the two-child norm.

"This not only includes the right to timely and appropriate quality health care but also to the underlying socio economic and environmental determinants of health," the manifesto said. "The current health policies and their implementation need to be seriously examined so that new policies can be implemented in the framework of quality health care for all and access to basic determinants of health as a basic right," Jan Swasthya Abhiyan's Amit Sengupta said.