[EQ] Learning from others - in advancing the health of all

Learning from others

Amartya Sen
Thomas W Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9761, 2011

Website: http://bit.ly/giZNan

“…..Thailand has made huge use of what they call the National Health Assembly, in which there are open discussions on what problems the public faces in health care and in related fields and also on how they can be removed. This has gone with the progress made in Thailand in introducing universal public health care, and it has been nicely supplemented by feedback from the people, with considerable gain in efficiency and reach. As a functioning democracy, India can learn from others on how the public can be engaged in advancing the health of all. There is a huge role for the media and for political leadership, of all parties, in advancing this important national cause, in making the best use of the facilities provided by democracy.

As it happens, some of the real progress that has happened in recent years in India has come from public discussion—and agitation. This applies, for example, to the delivery of cooked midday meals in schools, and selected interventions in child development in preschool institutions. These new changes have had positive effects, even though their use is uneven across the country, and has to be expanded and improved.

China does not yet have either of these important instruments of basic health care, but they could be important for China too, since China—despite its high average performance—does have identifiable gaps (the existence of which has been pioneeringly studied by the China Development Research Foundation). China too may have to learn from others to eliminate the resisting pockets of deprivation. India faces, of course, a much larger task.

Learning from other countries remains as important today as it was in Yi Jing's time, almost 1400 years ago………”

 

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