Chandrashekhar Joshi

WORLD HEALTH PARTNERS believes that a sustainable healthcare system must have an unwavering focus on two foundational elements: preventing onset of illnesses and ensuring simple illnesses don’t get serious. Experience across the developing world shows that this approach succeeds when communities are able to access primary health services within walkable distance. By adopting triaging principles, this approach also serves as the gatekeeper for secondary and tertiary care and forms a continuum of service provision. This vision, however, is not new. It was articulated in the Alma Alta Declaration of 1978 in which the focus was on both the preventive and curative aspects of primary health delivered within easy access to communities. The absence of medical resources in underserved areas, however, resulted in the elimination of curative care and a singular focus on preventive health under the GOBI-FFF (Growth monitoring-Oral rehydration-Breast feeding-Immunisation-Female literacy-Food supplementation-Family planning) strategy. Founded in 2008 by Gopi Gopalakrishnan, World Health Partners has so far (as on July 31st 2022) offered 317,510 teleconsultations. The trained and networked providers deliver most services on their own while the technology solutions play a supplementary role for referral to tele-connecting doctors in cities. Together, this approach has created easy access to good quality health and reproductive healthcare covering a range of services including family planning, maternal health, treatment for tuberculosis and childhood illnesses.