India’s COVID-19 Response: The Missing Links That Failed Us

The response to the second surge of the pandemic brought out significant deficiencies in our healthcare delivery systems. The over-emphasis on a dysfunctional tertiary health care system undermined the necessity of building a robust primary health care network in India, in the last 75 years. This coupled with a lack of reliable epidemiological data saw our planners get caught off-guard which reflected in the response to this present wave of the pandemic. The absence of standard guidelines or the presence of ones that lacked adequate evidence prevented healthcare providers from providing evidence-based care to the people affected by the pandemic. Drugs or treatments that showed little or no efficacy in managing the disease were prescribed to millions due to poor regulatory oversight. The over-reliance on drugs and hospitals instead of the creation of a robust primary health care system has left even the so-called “pharmacy of the world” in a state of shock and despair. Primary health care is the most crucial component of any healthcare system in the world which can help fight pandemics like the present one as well as maintaining a healthy society. The presence of a strong and empowered force of general practitioners would have helped manage the pandemic much better than what we have seen in the past few months. The lessons learnt in the past year, tells us that decisions made in the wake of this current pandemic, to help strengthen our primary health care system will go a long way in creating a resilient and healthy India as envisaged in the “Alma Ata Declaration” on primary health care more than forty-three years back.