Prevention of Vascular Disease and Development of Affordable Health Care for All: Thinking out of Box

Volume 1, Jan 2012

Gundu H. R. Rao; Minnesota, USA

Three decades ago, India and other participating countries signed a declaration to achieve “Global Health Care For All” by the year 2000(1). Two decades later, under the ages of the European Union, another conference was held in Belgium on the same theme- “the health care for all” (2). In view of the information technology revolution, now the theme is; can we achieve health information for all by 2015? (3). Except Spain and Costa Rica, no other country has achieved the goal of providing health care for all of their citizens. It is time to focus our attention, on how to achieve this goal in India, in the near future. Since India has made considerable progress in the information technology (IT) area, by bringing the giants of the IT and health care stakeholders on a common platform, we probably can bring health care to all in India. Indians have the highest incidence of hypertension, obesity, type-2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and stroke (4-6). To create awareness and develop preventive programs, we started a society “South Asian Society on Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis” (SASAT, www.sasat.org) in 1993.  There is no way we could provide modern medicine to all in a country like India. Furthermore, a quick survey reveals, that Indians by and large, want to select their own choice of therapies. Therefore, we will have come up with “novel” ideas to provide accessible, acceptable, affordable healthcare for all. In the 2010 conference of SASAT in Bangalore, we organized a round table conference (RTC) to discuss such novel approaches. Since majority of individuals pay from their own pocket for healthcare in India, they decide the type of healthcare they want. In view of this observation, the experts who met at RTC suggested forming an alliance of all traditional health systems [Global Alliance of Traditional Health Systems (GATHS, www.GATHS.org)]. 

Volume 1, Number 1, Page: 31-4.