Bhore committee

The Health Survey and Development Committee was appointed by the Government of India in October 1943 to survey the health conditions and services in British India. Its chairman was Joseph William Bhore, an Indian Civil Service officer. In its four-volume report, the Committee recommended integrating curative and preventive medicine at all levels, developing primary healthcare units in rural areas, and major changes in medical education. Volume III is a compendium of the reports, correspondence and other documents consulted for the report. It contains 57 annexures and a list of 206 memoranda, items of personal communication, notes by experts and sub-committee reports (appendix 57) that informed the survey. The Bhore Committee, as it was also known, consulted the 1941 population census and the survey reports of 11 administrative provinces to make its recommendations. These documents were used to estimate the extent of healthcare coverage, the personnel needed, and the healthcare services required for the national health plan that the Committee had proposed. The highlight of these reports was the inclusion of the social determinants of health, including child care and nutrition, town planning, and environmental conditions. The Committee made its recommendations on the basis of its own studies and surveys as well as the experience of countries such as the UK, the USA and the former Soviet Union. The Committee recommended that by the end of the first year of its national health...

The Bhore Committee constituted by the colonial government in 1943 to address the needs of healthcare in India was assisted a year later by a group of international advisers. These advisers, coming from an eclectic and divergent background, shared the view that universal and free access to medical care was imperative and that this was an essential political right of the people of India. The Economic and Political Weekly, published from Mumbai, is an Indian institution which enjoys a global reputation for excellence in independent scholarship and critical inquiry. First published in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and since 1966 as the Economic and Political Weekly, EPW, as the journal is popularly known, occupies a special place in the intellectual history of independent India. For more than five decades EPW has remained a unique forum that week after week has brought together academics, researchers, policy makers, independent thinkers, members of non-governmental organisations and political activists for debates straddling economics, politics, sociology, culture, the environment and numerous other disciplines. First published in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and since 1966 as the Economic and Political Weekly, EPW, as the journal is popularly known, occupies a special place in the intellectual history of independent India. For more than five decades EPW has remained a unique forum that week after week has brought together academics, researchers, policy makers, independent think...

Sir Joseph Bhore was appointed the chairman of the Health Survey and Development committee in 1943 by the British colonial government to give recommendations about healthcare in colonial India. Three years later, Sir Joseph submitted a report which is known as the Bhore Committee Report. The committee recommended integration of preventive and curative services, and development of primary health centres in two stages; it also gave recommendations for medical education and the training of doctors. As a short-term and immediate measure, the Bhore committee suggested developing one primary healthcare centre (PHC) for a population of 40,000 people. The proposed PHC was to be managed by two doctors, one nurse, four public health nurses, four midwives, four trained dais, two sanitary inspectors, two health assistants, one pharmacist, and 15 other class IV employees. It was recommended that the future secondary health centres would have a close coordination with the PHC. For the long-term, the Bhore committee report suggested a three-tiered healthcare system which featured a 75-bed hospital for 10,000 to 20,000 population; a 650-bed hospital at the secondary level; and a 2,500-bed hospital at the district level to provide health services to the people. The committee also suggested some major changes in the medical curriculum, including three months of training in preventive and social medicine to prepare for what it called “social physicians”. It believed that doctors should reali...

Sir Joseph William Bhore Early life and education [ ] J. W. Bhore was born in ICS Officer [ ] Bhore joined the Bhore worked variously in the Departments of Agriculture and Lands (1924–28), Industries and Labour (1930–32) and Commerce and He was the Acting High Commissioner for India in the Honours [ ] Bhore was appointed a Commander of the Diwan of Cochin [ ] J. W. Bhore had been Under Secretary, Government of Madras when he was appointed by the Bhore Committee [ ] Main article: Bhore is perhaps best remembered for his chairmanship of the Health Survey and Development Committee which was established in 1943 by the British colonial government. The committee was tasked with undertaking ‘a broad survey of the present position in regard to health conditions and health organisation in In its final report in 1946, the Committee noted thus: "If it were possible to evaluate the loss, which this country annually suffers through the avoidable waste of valuable human material and the lowering of human efficiency through malnutrition and preventable morbidity, we feel that the result would be so startling that the whole country would be aroused and would not rest until a radical change had been brought about". Two particular recommendations of the committee dealt with the establishment of The Bhore Committee provided the outline for setting up an organised public health system in India and it was deeply inspired by the Death [ ] Bhore married Scottish physician and medical missionary ...

The ravaging crisis that the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded as over the past one year and a half in different parts of the globe have bring into focus such quintessential aspects of the human existence that still remain appallingly rooted in the what could have beens rather than the whats that are being. With even the most advanced of healthcare systems thrown into disarray by the COVID 19 disease, the effectiveness of the extent of thrust placed on health by the modern society was left glaringly desirous of some serious review. But while most countries managed to crawl back to a decent state of survival from the mayhem unleashed when the virus started doing the international rounds, not every nation of the world has been fortunate enough to have things more or less on track. India in particular has been reeling under the second wave of the modern day pandemic for more than a month now in its peak, that came across as quite a blow to the country’s healthcare mechanism that had been somewhat efficient in its response to the maiden outbreak. It perhaps has been that one long year of enduring immense pressure that had made India’s health system vulnerable enough to be caught totally unawares when the country suddenly found itself embroiled in a more intense second wave of the virus, overwhelmed as it had been by the lack of adequate facilities and apathy on the part of the administration as well as the public. Shaken, disrupted and almost in shambles now over unavailabilit...