Money9 Edit | States should pull out all stops to prepare for a third wave

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With the third wave of the coronavirus looming, various state governments of the country need to move full steam ahead to ramp up medical infrastructure for better preparedness to meet the challenge.

The country has a wealth of experience in the PPP model where both stakeholders — the state and private players —provide equity and/or resources, typically land as equity – to build hospitals and other capacities. Through this route the state helps in providing land and fast tracks all facilitation services while the private sector brings in the hardware and software – staff included – to provide treatment and manage the facilities. As a part of its bargain, the state asks the authorities to earmark a share of the beds for the bottom-of-the-pyramid citizens who cannot pay market prices.

Ever since the economy was liberalised in the 1990s, different governments have hard sold their respective states to domestic and foreign investors. All of them have an active network in the different investor communities. Health is predominantly a state subject and with the pandemic raging, it has returned to the top agenda of all governments.

It is high time state governments activate all channels, commit more resources to public health and invite private players to all sectors of healthcare — from hospitals to critical consumables like oxygen.

It is not necessary that new hospitals are built from scratch. All governments have many buildings that are not in active use. These can be handed over to private players for quick conversion to hospitals, even temporary facilities. Every state has closed industrial units that have ready electricity and water connection and other infrastructure like road connectivity and factory sheds. The feasibility of putting this vast idle infrastructure to produce consumables and even train manpower for different sectors like pathological tests should be thoroughly explored and private players invited to utilise them. But to put abandoned resources to use, red tape has to be killed first.