Decided by Default

HEALTH care in India has certainly conic a long way in the last 50 odd years. A state which once promised its citizens affordable and efficient public health services is constructing rapidly conditions for the growth of health care for only those who can afford it. Health services cannot obviously be treated as purely an economic enterprise where growth and sustainability are the sole critical dimensions. Historically too, all over the world, models of health care have been determined not by happenstance but by combinations of factors, including the availability of resources and political choice which is again an outcome of articulation of the needs of the people. Whichever way the debate is viewed, the greatest good for the largest number remains a cardinal principle.