THEME:4
-: Setting the Framework and Agenda for People Centred Accountability of Private and Corporate Health Care Sectors :-

REPORTS & UPDATES

Globally, private and non-state actors are playing an increased role in global and national health policy making. Further in many low and middle income countries, the share of private healthcare provisioning has considerably increased. With the policy environment where States are promoting private health care at the expense of public health services, and in addition with advances in medical technology, the healthcare landscape is rapidly changing. This is visible in the form of intersecting public-private partnerships (PPPs), hybrid mechanisms of provisioning, insurance industry linkages, blurring of boundaries between public and private medical practice, nexus of medical profession and commercial actors linked with conflicts of interest, and other such unregulated processes of privatisation. In an environment where private providers are largely unregulated, and hence are unaccountable either to the citizens or to the government, the accountability deficit continues to deepen, creating significant challenges for patient's access to quality and affordable care, and preventing redressal of grievances from such powerful institutions. There is a growing demand for ensuring social accountability of the private health care sector, and developing accountable regulatory frameworks to achieve this.

The thematic sessions at the Symposium will aim at mapping the emerging nature of the private medical sector including trends of commercialisation and corporatisation, range of rights violations being faced by patients and citizens, and efforts done by civil society networks and patient rights groups in different 

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parts of the world to ensure accountability of private health care actors. The symposium will also facilitate critical analysis of existing regulation for private sector, and will stress on accountability and citizen participation in concerned regulatory frameworks. It will also focus on the constructive by promotion of discourse on protecting patient's rights, and assuring good quality, rational and ethical healthcare.

Sub-themes:

• Mapping changing nature of the private medical sector in low and middle income countries (LMICs), including trends of commercialisation and corporatisation, which impact on social accountability
• Creating community evidence regarding patient rights violations in the private and corporate health care institutions
• Sharing initiatives for mobilising civil society and suffering communities - especially patients, to protect patients rights and demand accountability from the private health care sector; learning from related innovations
• Analysing existing regulatory frameworks for the private medical sector, brainstorming about developing citizen participation in accountability and regulatory framework