Indus Health Plus, a leading preventive health check-up company in India, is looking to partner with both central and state governments to facilitate low cost mass screening to prevent non communicable diseases (NCDs) burden in the country.

The burden of NCDs like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and mental disorders is rising due to change in lifestyle of the people of the country. As per World Health Organization (WHO), NCDs account for a total of 53% of all deaths in India in 2008. NCDs and mental illness will cost India $4.58 trillion between 2012 and 2030, according to a report published by the World Economic Forum and Harvard School of Public Health.

“Ill health affects economic growth in several ways including early retirement, negative expectations regarding employment and reduced productivity. The disease burden also leads to increase of expenditure for health system, individuals and households,” said the report, titled Economics of Non-Communicable Diseases in India.

However, the central government has introduced varied national programmes to control and prevent NCDs.  The successful implementation of these programmes depends upon the prudent strategies, robust monitoring and evaluation system.

The NCDs can be prevented through robust early screening and undertaking the lifestyle related modifiable risk factors. Early prevention hugely trims down the cost that the late treatment incurs, said Harish Pillai, chief operating officer, Indus Health Plus.

One in four Indians is a cardiac patient, one in 10 is a diabetic and cancer is the third leading cause of death in the country. Early detection of diseases through preventive tests not only saves life but also protects individual and his family from going through tremendous physical, emotional and financial hardship. Our preventive health checkup package combines all the three diseases, he said.

Indus has partnered with governments of UAE and Sri Lanka in preventive health segment. In India the company has screened more than one lakh people in Varanasi as part of its CSR project. Indus along with Dr Lal PathLabs conducts screening programme at seven primary health centres in Varanasi and shares the screening data with the government as part of National Rural Health Mission. There are 632 districts in the country. We want to reach out to maximum number of districts to promote preventive healthcare through public private partnership. The National Health Policy's focus on preventive healthcare is a welcome step to encourage the preventive healthcare. Its high time the government should take steps to strengthen the primary health centres where a significant number of people visit to get health checkup done. Private players can step in to provide requisite infrastructure at primary health centres. For which fund allocation needs to be done by the government, said Pillai.

Currently 60-65 lakh people go for annual health checkup in the country. Awareness on preventive healthcare among people needs to be stepped up by the government and non government players to increase the number of people going for health checkups, he quipped.

Talking about expansion plan, he said “We have plans to increase number of preventive health checkups to 12 lakh over a couple years from existing 6 lakh checkups.”

Replying a query, Indus COO said “The government needs to increase tax exemption from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 15,000 on health checkups to promote preventive healthcare.”

Started its operation in Pune in 2000, Indus had opted for agent model to reach out households. Over last 17 years, it grew significantly. With more than 6 lakh checkups, Indus has become the largest preventive health checkup company in India partnering with 122 healthcare facilities including Apollo, Wockhardt, SRL Religare, NM Medical, Sahayadri, Vikram Hospitals etc. It has 85,000 agents covering 78 cities in 17 states.