Background- In many low and middle income countries especially in South Asia and Africa, the private healthcare sector is playing a major role in providing healthcare. With advance of medical technology and commercialization of healthcare, the healthcare landscape is rapidly changing in low and middle income countries. This poses significant challenges for access to quality and affordable care by patients. Hence there is a growing discourse around the need to protect patient’s rights, which can be a key platform for ensuring greater accountability of private healthcare providers.

This webinar will describe in detail the current discourse on patient’s rights, both in terms of existing legal and formal provisions such as charters for patients rights, as well as common violations of these rights. A few existing mechanisms for protecting patients rights will be presented as examples. We will discuss how mechanisms to ensure Patients rights need to be built into any regulatory mechanism for the health sector, with corresponding grievance redressal systems, to ensure that patients rights do not remain on paper, but are made real entitlements for ordinary people.

Speakers- Dr Abhay Shukla and Dr Abhijit More

Dr Abhay Shukla is a public health physician who has been working on health issues in collaboration with people’s movements and grassroots NGOs as part of SATHI, a Health sector civil society organization in India. He is a member of advisory bodies for the National Health Mission as well as the National Human Rights Commission of India. He is a national convener of People’s Health Movement–India and has facilitated public hearings on right to healthcare across the country. Dr Shukla has authored and edited several books on health system issues including co-authoring the widely read book ‘Dissenting Diagnosis’, which exposes malpractices in the private medical sector. He is involved in action and research for the promotion of patient’s rights, social regulation of the private medical sector, and developing a system for universal healthcare.

Dr Abhijit More, a medical doctor and health activist. He is working as a Senior Project Officer in SATHI, a Pune based NGO in India working on health issues. He is also a co-convener of Jan Arogya Abhiyan (Maharashtra State Chapter of People’s Health Movement-India) which is a network of civil society organizations working on health rights.  He is involved in advocacy and campaigns for patient’s rights, improving public healthcare system, regulation of private healthcare sector and Universal Health Care in Maharashtra. He has written many newspaper articles on various issues of public health importance.