Union Health Minister calls for cross learning to accomplish public health goals

New Delhi: The health ministry endeavours to foster cross-learning amongst state governments, NGOs, healthcare organisations and other stakeholders so that they work in concordance to achieve the overarching public health goals, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said recently.

Vardhan was speaking at the inauguration the sixth national summit on 'good, replicable practices and innovations, along with Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey.

"This NHM National Summit is a celebration of ideas, innovations and knowledge sharing and we all must take back these and ensure that we implement at least a few of them," Vardhan said.

Calling the summit the aggregating ground of new ideas, thoughts and expression, the health minister said, "The ministry of health endeavours to foster cross-learning amongst the state governments, NGOs, healthcare organisations and other academic institutions so that these work in concordance to achieve the overarching public health goals."

Vardhan suggested that similar to the national summit, states also can have state/regional conferences for sharing of knowledge within districts.

"Let the national knowledge and ideas be transmitted to district-level health workers, functionaries through the state/regional conferences," he said.

He added that in addition to presenting best practices, states must also emulate and roll out the best practices from other states. He stressed the importance of self-auditing for performance assessment.

Vardhan also highlighted the noteworthy achievements in the health sector during the past few years such as Ayushman Bharat, Telemedicine, National Health Policy 2017, Medical Education, and Health Systems Strengthening.

Addressing the summit, NITI Aayog Member (Health) Vinod K Paul emphasised the importance of system level change for greater strides in healthcare and termed the National Health Mission (NHM) a great programme for healthcare delivery to the populace.

"There are seven building blocks for the future advances in the health sector -- focused stewardship, adequate finance, capable HR, health commodities, service delivery which is equity and quality driven, information systems, and community participation for social and behaviour change," he said.

The summit saw the launch of Social Awareness and Action to Neutralise Pneumonia Successfully (SAANS) campaign to control pneumonia.

This campaign will mobilise people for protecting and preventing children from pneumonia; and health personnel, governments and other stakeholders to prioritise treatment towards the control of pneumonia -- one of the most fatal childhood illnesses.