The vicious onslaught of the second wave of the Covid–19 pandemic has left the entire country gasping for breath, quite literally. It has also brought in the open the woefully inadequate healthcare infrastructure in the country. That the pandemic in the last 12 months has caused unprecedented financial as well as health related distress to almost every household would be an understatement now.
Healthcare in India is—and for a very long time for excellent reasons must remain—a significant domain as well as responsibility of the State, primarily due to the capital intensive investments and high costs of private sector health care.
However, that public healthcare facilities are inequitable in availability, accessibility and standards with a crunch of both financial as well as qualified human resources is already a well known fact.
Therefore, it is required to look at certain facts to ascertain short and long term solutions for this problem.