Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering said, “Any money spend on health is not an expenditure, it is an investment.” He was speaking at the Universal Health Coverage High-Level Meeting of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Themed, “Universal health coverage: moving together to build a healthier world”, It saw heads of state, political and health leaders, policy-makers, and universal health coverage champions advocate for health for all.
In his six-minute speech on Monday, the prime minister shared about Bhutan’s unique Constitution that ensured free health and education, its strides in healthcare and, the lurking challenges.
Dr Lotay Tshering said every activity in Bhutan, including the health care system, is woven cleverly with the national vision of Gross National Happiness. Although a small country, Bhutan is comfortable with the healthcare system.
“We have good referral systems, starting from the periphery to central and cases that we cannot treat in Bhutan, we refer at the cost of the government to the centres of excellence in the nearby region’s hospitals. When it comes to medication, we have quality standard, WHO standard qualified essential medicines all for free around the country.”
The prime minister mentioned Bhutan’s immunization coverage of 98 to 99 per cent. He said to ensure the sustainability of providing free access to essential drugs and vaccination, Bhutan has organised a health trust fund as well.
But, even as Bhutan prides over these achievements, Dr Lotay Tshering reminded that it is not free of challenges.
“One of the main challenges is being a very difficult and harsh geographical terrain. It’s not about what the people do not get in the hospitals but our patients and people coming to the hospitals is a challenge. It’s a challenge that we have less financial resources, and thinly spread infrastructures and very fewer healthcare providers. Those are the challenges,” he said.
“And on a very unfortunate note, Bhutan though being a very small and underdeveloped country, a disease pattern is changing a bit. We still have the biggest lead of infectious disease, at the same time we are facing an early onset of non-communicable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, cancer diseases have set in little early. So our free health care system is little challenged to its most.”
As part of accelerating progress towards universal health coverage, the prime minister also shared the Bhutanese government’s commitment. Universal Health Coverage means that all people and communities receive the quality health services they need, without financial hardship.
“My government has initiated a very ambitious thousand golden days plus package whereby we would like to take care of the baby as soon as or from the day the mother conceives throughout the pregnancy, institutional delivery, ensure all vaccinations 100% and take care of the baby until the baby’s second birthday by ministry of health. After celebrating the second birthday, we wanted the ministry of health to handover the baby to the ministry of education so that we enrol the entire baby in early childhood centre cares and then go on to perform or join the formal education.”
In his closing remarks, Dr Lotay Tshering urged all the leaders of the member-states to pay utmost attention to primary healthcare. He re-emphasised that a healthy nation can never happen without healthy citizens.
Samten Dolkar
