The proposal under consideration of the health ministry follows an expert group meeting held last month on the public health situation in India on the topic. Discussions on the topic of ‘advancing public health priorities, innovation, and global leadership’ focused on the urgent need for an ‘Indian public health university.’ The meeting was chaired by the minister of state for health, Anu Priya Patel.
Participants included experts from the National Institute of Health Family Welfare, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the health ministry, NITI Aayog, the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, the International Institute for Population Sciences, the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, the Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins University and Ashoka University.
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The plan is to establish something similar to the Johns Hopkins Public Health University and Harvard School of Public Health in the US.
The aim is to make India self-reliant to address future pandemics, and also involves setting up a public health council to oversee the work of public health institutes in India and a consortium of public health institutes in the country.
“Covid-19 pandemic has shown the importance and priority of public health. The standardization of public health courses is lacking. So, the experts unanimously made three proposals Indian Public Health University very urgently because there are around 50 multiple disciplinary cadre courses for which there is no standardization of public health. We also need a public health council just like we have the National Medical Commission, or Dental Commission, etc. The third proposal is to establish public health consortium before we form public health university because it is a long process and may take time which is being proposed through an Act of Parliament. The plan is to synergize our work and the need of the work shoulder to shoulder to take fully informed decisions,” said an official aware of the matter.
“Till the public health consortium is formed, the plan is to form a coordination committee with the experts from All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health and the National Centre for Disease Control for taking uniform joint and board-based decisions. These institutions directly report to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) at the health ministry,” informed the first official.
The difference between a university and an institute is that a university gets recognition from the University Grants Commission (UGC) while an institute has to get an affiliation from a university.
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“For instance, the Union health ministry runs the National Institute of Health Family Welfare, the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, etc., among others, which offer multiple public health courses. However, these are not recognized by the UGC and lack ‘university’ status. So, all courses are affiliated to some or the other university. For example, NIHFW is affiliated to the University of Delhi,” the second official said.
“Once the public health university is in place, other public health institutes which do not have university status can also approach for affiliation to the public health university. Right now, some of the institutes are affiliated to government universities or while those who do not get it, they go to private universities,” said the second official.
The second official said that the National Public Health Council is very much required and has been proposed by the experts.
“Just like for all medical education, there is a regulatory body like NMC which lays down the standards, quality education, student-teacher ratio, duration of course etc. Similarly, there are nursing and dental councils respectively. Therefore, for Public Health courses, there is no regulatory body which can decide its standards, education quality, duration, whether to be online or offline, what should be student-teacher ratio etc. So, there is a need for a Public Health Council, which has been proposed and will be established by the government for regulatory role,” said the second official adding that the proposals are still under consideration at the health ministry.
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There used to be a consortium of public health experts from NIHFW. But with the passage of some time, it did not sustain and faded away. Therefore, the need for consortium has been proposed again, the second official said.
Queries sent to the health ministry spokesperson last week remained unanswered.
