Need Ventona Is Addressing
Ventona’s Home Healthcare Services for Rural and Urban India – Background Story & Health Services
Today Rural India, with a high burden of non-communicable diseases (apart from other vector borne diseases and chronic ailments) faces a critical shortage of health workers and MBBS Doctors that poses significant challenges in rural healthcare delivery. India ranks 145 among 195 counties (as per 2018-19 data) in healthcare index and India’s healthcare access and quality (HAQ) index is 44.8, lagging behind neighboring countries like China, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka and Bhutan. India has ranked 131 out of 188 countries in 2018 human development index (HDI) ranking.
Various Govt. reports and statistics reveal the consistent deficit of health workers across the rural terrains, where each Doctor is estimated to serve a community averaging nearly 20,000+ people (@ 44,000 doctors for 830+ million people). Even with an overall ratio of 1: 921 of ‘medical practitioner : patients’ in India as on December 2017, regular-and-continued availability of MBBS Doctors are still a challenge where majorly the medical practitioner fraternity comprises unani, ayurveda and homeopathy. This gap in services is attributed to lack of training, recruitment of health workers at Block and Panchayat levels and availability of point-of-care equipment and devices at the different health centers run by the state Govts. or NGOs. Even collaborative efforts where solutions are implemented have been in silos rather than a holistic community driven initiative.
has embarked on a social mission to address the above segment in a sincere endeavor to augment rural public health in a collaborative manner through community initiatives wherein the healthcare service delivery model would be primarily through Village Level Healthcare Entrepreneurs (VLHE).
Current scenario in India:
- India has 864.72 million wireless telephone connections with rural tele-density of 39.90% which increased to 70% in 2017.
- With 65% of India’s youth population over 35 years of age, skill building has been identified as the key to develop India’s future economy.
- Vision of the Government of India and United Nations SDG 2030 to focus on the vulnerability “first claim of development belongs to the poor”; which is the prime impetus for Ventona HealthTech to extend ‘door-step healthcare services’ to semi-urban and rural areas of Bengal and also in the impoverished states of Eastern India including North-East.
Ventona HealthTech has explored the Home-Healthcare ecosystem in the Urban segment and have found that there are currently many aggregators of health services providing peripherals services like providing nurses, ANM caregiver-companions to lonely elderly or geriatric services, physiotherapist on demand, junior doctors on emergency or ambulance services for facilitating hospitalization; all predominantly targeted towards ‘tertiary care’. But there are no service providers or facilities available to provide ‘comprehensive preventive care at home’ to keep away medical emergencies leading to hospitalisation in the first place and help diagnose on-set of chronic non-communicable-diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension, Cardiovascular ailments, CKD and COPD or age related illness namely Parkinson, Dementia or Alzheimer in elderly and senior citizens.
As the population ages and the prevalence of long-term conditions increases, telemedicine is increasingly being used to help elderly people maintain their independence and continue living in their own homes. Elderly individuals have become one of the main target groups for telehealth technologies, with many Point of care Test (POCT) devices available for people with chronic health conditions and for those with limited mobility or memory problems typical of advanced age.
It becomes even more challenging for the aging urban population today to handle critical emergency situations with minimal or no support systems at home, with nuclear families being the order of the day and more often grown-up children are staying in different cities or abroad for professional / career reasons. Hence this is another most important segment that Ventona HealthTech is addressing to provide holistic home health care at the doorsteps of elderly and senior citizens to prevent emergency medical conditions leading to hospitalization and keep away on-set of chronic diseases and age related ailments.
Ventona’s disruptive technology-oriented-healthcare services are aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 2030 initiative) of the United Nations such that they would create a sustainable preventive health ecosystem and reduce the load on tertiary care, thereby reducing the spiraling year-on-year health budget of the Govt. Thus these Services would like to induce social & behavioral change, alter their care seeking behavior and mobilize the community towards better and healthy living.
A first-of-its-kind study conducted on 4000 patients admitted to 10 hospitals across India (including four from NCR), shows mortality rates owing to multi-drug-resistant (MDR) or extremely-drug-resistant (XDR) bacteria in India are more than twice compared to that in high-income countries in the west. According to the study, conducted by researchers from John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP) among others, the overall mortality rate due to varied drug-resistant bacteria in India was 13% in 2015. Most of the patients who died were either old or admitted to ICUs, where they were diagnosed with the infection. In advanced nations, similar mortality rates ranged between 2% and 7%.
Thus patients acquire ‘nosocomial infections’ during tertiary care in hospitalization wherein more often infections become multi or extreme drug resistant leading to eventual fatality; which is even more critical than the un-detected non-communicable-diseases that contributes 61% of deaths in ageing India.
So, Preventive Care is the only answer to address this 61 + 13 = 74% of the populations in India, which is today already burdened with the challenge of outreaching healthcare in rural India, as there is a huge dearth of qualified doctors. And that can happen through changes in human behavioral response towards preventive health and general wellness. It’s not there today and that’s what we would like to change !
This is the NEED that Ventona HealthTech is trying to address through their ambitious initiatives of home healthcare, extending to semi-urban and rural sectors in Bengal. Ventona is aiming to improve the general health status of common people and prevent the medical emergencies of our diverse community both in rural and urban areas by providing quality healthcare services that are affordable, accessible, community driven, technology enabled and culturally sensitive.
