India’s Pathetic Public Health Situation

This letter is in response to the remarks made by Vikash R Keshri (EPW, 9 September 2017) against our article, “India Badly Needs Public Health Education” (EPW, 8 July 2017). While we appreciate Keshri for his attention, we strongly feel that he implicitly fails to recognise that India, as a rising global economic power, has a tragic public health record that locks a vast population in preventable morbidity and mortality. He sounds satisfied with current postgraduate degrees or diplomas for doctors in community medicine as a proxy for a degree or diploma in public health. The argument is rather inexplicable as the training in community medicine is not in any way comparable to the training in public health, and training public health doctors, while important, is not the core issue to building a public health infrastructure.

Our article did not aim to impose the “pattern of public health education laid down by the western world.” We did not even elaborate a “pattern” of public health education. The article addressed the issue that India lacks the trained workforce to ensure improved public health. Our proposal is to recognise the need for public health professionals in India, which demands training in public health of personnel as well as doctors, and could be achieved by introducing public health training at university and college levels.