Why Preventive Healthcare for India?

There is an English proverb that states “Stitch in Time Saves Nine”, which means it is better to take necessary precautions for safety, rather than being sorry. The same applies to the field of healthcare, where it is always advisable to take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of a disease, rather than taking actions once the disease had already occurred. This is the reason why the focus of healthcare across the world is shifting from curative healthcare to preventive healthcare   In India, the growing population has been plagued with multiple lifestyle diseases. The complexity of the same is increased by the fact that these diseases are chronic in nature, which can only be controlled but can never be fully cured.

The seriousness of the matter is evident from the following statistics in India:  

1. Four people die of heart attack every minute
2. Two people die of diabetes every minute
3. One people die of cancer and stroke every minute
4. 35% of deaths due to heart attack, cancer or diabetes have occurred to the population with an age group of 35 to 60  

The onslaught of these diseases can only be curbed if they are detected early. A study indicates that 40% of the cancer cases can be prevented with a healthy lifestyle of the patient and by early diagnosis of the disease. Although the Indian population has been primarily surviving on a curative healthcare so far, the following factors are pushing the same towards a preventive healthcare:

1. Increasing awareness about diseases in both rural and urban areas
2. Increase in disposable income, which allows the population to take pro-active steps in their personal healthcare
3. Increase in lifestyle diseases, which can only be curbed through preventive healthcare than curative healthcare  

But we have only walked a few steps in adopting a preventive healthcare system, as the challenges that lay in our paths are multiple with varying complexity. One of these challenges is the lack of an ecosystem that will allow the individual to make some changes in their daily lifestyle, which will allow them to adopt preventive healthcare.