Central and state government healthcare providers are faced with the dual  challenge to tackle malnutrition, leprosy, malaria on the one hand and life style disorders like cardiovascular diseases and diabetes on the other. This is because the country’s population has a growing incidence of both the diseases from the developing and developed world. Despite these surmounting problems, India has reported no polio incidence this year, indicated an impressive fall in maternal and infant mortality rates, stated Dr EV Ramana Reddy, secretary, Karnataka government health and family welfare.

Dr Reddy in his keynote address on the ‘Complexities of Healthcare Delivery’, at the Conference on Innovative and Sustainable Healthcare Management: Strategies for Growth organized here in Bengaluru by the All India Management Association (AIMA) said that in such a situation, where the both the central and state governments are having to handle the growing incidence of diseases, the big issue has been to attract the doctors to rural service. While Karnataka government has passed a legislation on this, it needs to be seen how it would succeed.

“The irony was that Karnataka is home to the highest number of medical colleges in the country with 6,000 doctors passing out annually from these institutions. But these doctors are not keen on rural service which is now made mandatory. The state’s department of health and family welfare is  facing a shortage of 600 specialists went on to recruit the candidates at the second level which normally requires six years of service. For this post, only 252 applied, 137 candidates came in for counselling, around eight dropped out of service after a week and 65 remain. Although the state is well above the national market for infrastructure in terms of primary health centres (PHCs), the serious shortfall of specialists, doctors and paramedics was marring the delivery of healthcare, said Dr Reddy.

Karnataka has 2013 primary health care centres which is 1,000 more than the national requirement for a population of 30,000. “We have adequate requirements in terms of facilities, accessibility with mobile healthcare vans  and affordability by offering free treatment for below-the-poverty Line (BPL) patients. Now the state is also aggressively working to integrate allopathy with Ayush. Although it is easy to source capital for all efforts, it is the  access to right medical experts which is the most difficult. Therefore healthcare delivery is complex and a mammoth task to ensure sustainability, he said.