HEALTH: Quality Care for All
Good health is, perhaps, the most immediate on people’s mind when they think about their well being. Clearly, success in achieving a healthier society will have a positive impact on all other spheres of our development endeavour.
Like our education agenda, our aim demands a paradigm shift in how we think about health services, and about how we organize and manage the health sector.
We want to see Bhutanese people who are not just living longer, but leading healthier lives. The emphasis to date on increasing survival rates must shift to improving both the longevity and quality of life, taking into consideration the number of years spent in good health.
We want to improve further the quality of health care provided by strengthening the health delivery system. We want to create innovative means to deliver health services and institute incentives and opportunities for both motivating and strengthening the health care providers.
Our constitution gives every Bhutanese the right to free basic health care. The PDP is fully committed to ensuring that universal access to basic health services is available to all Bhutanese, particularly for those living in remote areas and those in the margins of society. In addition, we will ensure that the quality of our basic health care is the best in the region.
The PDP firmly believes in providing health care with a humane face and we will work towards improving both the quality of health care and the services that go with it. We also recognize the importance of providing alternative choices such as private health care especially in the large urban areas for people who can afford it and for the convenience of the modern busy citizen.
Accessible Healthcare:
- Expand and upgrade health facilities for timely and convenient care
- Reduce time, distance and ease of access to emergency healthcare services, especially by those without road access through cost-effective means, and consider the possibility of airborne ambulance
- Establish a regional referral hospital in Central Bhutan
- Enhance and consolidate the effective use of village health workers in order to increase coverage of the national health delivery system
- Augment the capital base of the Bhutan Health Trust Fund to sustain the procurement and supply of essential medicines
Quality Healthcare:
- Uniformly improve healthcare across district, regional and national levels
- Consider granting autonomy to the referral hospitals in phases starting with the National referral hospital and institute best practices in management to make our hospitals more patient-friendly
- Increase the number of healthcare personnel including specialists, nurses and effect innovative joint approaches with civil society organizations that can tap foreign medical volunteers
- Enhance diagnostic and curative capabilities
- Enhance the capability and skills of village health workers in order to improve the quality of rural health
- Take advantage of ICT applications especially telemedicine to healthcare services that can make access to the world’s best medical practitioners truly borderless, from anywhere in Bhutan
- Enhance capacity of health training institutes (RIHS and NITM) to increase intake and upgrade RIHS to degree level
- Explore the possibilities of initiating private medical practice, and inviting FDI participation in selected healthcare areas
- Upgrade health facilities – e.g. where necessary, upgrade BHUs to Grade I BHUs staffed by a doctor
Investments in prevention and promotion can greatly enhance the general health and wellbeing of our population, and in the long run result in considerable savings to the government.
Health Promotion and Prevention:
- Drastically raise access to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Expand promotive, preventive and rehabilitative programs
- Improve nutritional status of the public at large, with particular emphasis on rural population, breast-feeding mothers and children
- Work aggressively to reduce the incidence and mortality rates of diseases that can threaten our national security, such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, and Bird Flue
- Advocate healthier behaviour patterns to reduce and prevent lifestyle diseases that are increasingly prevalent;
- Upgrade the National Public Health Laboratory
- Establish rehabilitation and detoxification centres to address the growing problem of substance abuse
- Further improve capacity for preventing and treating mental health
- Continue efforts to prevent, treat and rehabilitate disability and establish occupational health programs
- Institute public health research and establish an active surveillance unit that will generate health information to make decisions to protect, prevent and promote the health of our people
Across the world people have come to recognize what our elders have know through the ages – traditional medicine is effective and in certain areas has advantages over modern allopathic medicine. The value of traditional medicine and its popularity among our people spurs us to promote traditional health services in our country.
Traditional Medicine:
- Establish more indigenous medicine clinics
- Improve the quality and delivery of the traditional health care system
- Explore possibilities of integrating traditional medical knowledge and practices of Sowa Rigpa with modern allopathic treatment
- Upgrade the Pharmaceutical Research Unit
- Develop and commercialize new indigenous health products and services
PDP recognizes health workers as an integral part of the health delivery system and the critical role they play in improving the quality of care overall. We are committed to both strengthening the health work force and in ensuring that we build a team of professionals that is the best in the region and comparable to anywhere in the world.
Health Workers:
- Provide opportunities for health workers to upgrade their knowledge and skills periodically
- Institute appropriate incentive packages and improve the working environment
- Encourage development of specialized skills to provide specialized care in medical fields that are acutely needed – helping reduce the number of referrals abroad and health expenditure
- Initiate provision of specialized training and post graduate courses in the national referral hospital
Our health agenda will focus aggressively on a variety of women and child related health issues and specifically ensure that the MDG’s of reducing maternal and child mortality are achieved.
Women and Child Health:
- Place high priority on women and child health particularly reproductive health, teenage pregnancy, neonatal health and family health
- Sustain Universal Child Immunization and include other appropriate vaccines in the schedule
- Raise the number of women personnel, serving particularly in rural areas, to raise women’s comfortable access to care and treatment
- Increase institutional deliveries towards achieving all births attended by skilled health personnel
- Promote family planning services
- Improve obstetric and paediatric wards in all hospitals
Leave a Comment