The PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) signed a five-year MoU for launching a joint programme to organise capacity building initiatives in skilling healthcare professionals especially in the areas of chronic diseases and prevention of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs). The MoU signed between Dr Mahesh Gupta, president, PHD Chamber and prof K Srinath Reddy, president, PHFI, will undertake country-wide initiatives to conduct training workshops for industry, Government (Central/State) and MNCs on important public health issues.
According to the World Health Statistics 2011, the density of doctors in India is six for a population of 10,000, while that of nurses and midwives is 13 per 10,000 population. India has a doctor-to-population ratio of 0.5:1000 in comparison to 0.3 in Thailand, 0.4 in Sri lanka, 1.6 in China, 5.4 in the UK, and 5.5 in the United States of America. The density of practicing healthcare workforce gets further skewed as almost 25 per cent doctors and 40 per cent nurses don’t practice in the formal health system. PHFI in its 2012 report estimated a shortage of 6.4 million allied health professionals in the country. The report highlighted the gap in both; sheer number of professionals of various specialties as well as the quality of skills acquired by the graduating students from several hundreds of institutions across the country.
According to estimates, the overall Indian healthcare market today is worth $ 100 billion and is expected to grow to $ 280 billion by 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 22.9 per cent. Healthcare delivery, which includes hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostics centers, and pharmaceuticals, constitutes 65 per cent of the overall market.