Sundararaman T
Professor, School of Health Systems Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai, INDIA; Former Executive Director, National Health Systems Resource Centre, New Delhi, India,.
Indian J Med Ethics. 2017 Apr-Jun;2(2):69-71. doi: 10.20529/ijme.2017.018. Epub 2017 Apr 4.
On March 15, 2017 the union cabinet approved the new National Health Policy. The next day a 28-page policy text and an accompanying 13-page situational analysis were placed in Parliament and in the public domain. To have, at all times, a health policy in place that shows a road map on how a nation would show "progressive realization" of health as a basic human right is an obligation under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This is an international treaty adopted in 1976, to which India became a signatory in 1979, and this was one of the catalysts for the adoption of the first National Health Policy in 1983. The immediate political backdrop to the articulation of a National Health Policy 2017 (NHP 2017), replacing the 2002 policy, is that a new health policy and a national health assurance plan were both part of the BJP's electoral manifesto. It has taken close to 34 months after the government took office, and some 26 months after the draft was circulated for public discussion, to finally approve the policy. This is reflective of the considerable contestation and contradictory pressures, often almost evenly matched, that went into finalising this policy.
2017年3月15日，联邦内阁批准了新的《国家卫生政策》。次日，一份28页的政策文本及一份长达13页的形势分析报告被提交至议会并向公众公开。始终制定一项卫生政策，展示出国家如何“逐步实现”健康作为一项基本人权的路线图，这是《经济、社会及文化权利国际公约》规定的一项义务。这是一项1976年通过的国际条约，印度于1979年签署，这也是1983年通过首部《国家卫生政策》的催化剂之一。2017年《国家卫生政策》（NHP 2017）取代2002年政策出台的直接政治背景是，一项新的卫生政策和一项国家健康保障计划均是印度人民党的竞选宣言的一部分。政府上任后已过去近34个月，草案发布供公众讨论约已过去26个月，该政策才最终获批。这反映出在敲定这项政策过程中存在着相当多的争议和相互矛盾的压力，各方力量往往势均力敌。
