Abbott has entered into a three-year partnership with the Government of Puducherry to provide quality healthcare service within the Union Territory. Vivek Mohan, Senior Director, Global Integrated Health, Abbott speaks to Raelene Kambli about the focus of the partnership, strategy adopted and Abbott’s future plans
What is the focus of the MOU that you have signed with the Government of Puducherry? Why did you plan to initiate such a PPP?
| Vivek Mohan |
The MOU signed with the Government of Puducherry is a first-of-its-kind agreement for integrated health management services to improve awareness of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia (cholesterol-related disorders) and thyroid disorders. The partnership aims at reducing disease burden and improving patient outcomes by way of spreading awareness among patients and healthcare providers.
With an estimated 61.3 million people living with diabetes, India currently accounts for almost 17 per cent of the global diabetic population. A further 77.2 million people in India are at risk of developing diabetes. An Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study suggests that the country’s incidence rate for dyslipidaemia is estimated to be 37.5 per cent amongst adults aged between 15-64 years. And thyroid disorders in India are characterised by a high prevalence (approximately 11 per cent of adult population), minimal diagnosis, low awareness and low involvement of doctors in treatment.
The partnership programme will reach out to the Union Territory’s citizens and screen over seven lakh people who are thirty years or above. It will also build the skills of local healthcare providers through continued medical education.
The partnership will address issues of disease awareness and management, and implement unique solutions that will leverage the public-health ecosystem. Ultimately, this will help to drive better health outcomes for patients, thus reducing the disease burden in Puducherry.
The company believes that combating NCDs is a shared commitment and industry needs to support innovative, responsible and sustainable business practices, which in turn will play an important role in building a healthy society. Partnerships with government will help to prevent and manage these diseases effectively; in particular, by strengthening the healthcare ecosystem addressing NCDs and the systemic barriers.
What is Abbott’s role in this partnership?
Abbott will provide subsidised diagnostics, educational support to healthcare providers, patient awareness material and will conduct diet guidance camps. Abbott will also provide non-communicable disease management kits (including supplies to measure blood pressure, body mass index and blood glucose) and 150,000 glucose test strips to support monitoring of diabetes.
What is the government’s role in this partnership?
The Government of Puducherry will provide the infrastructure and the necessary permissions and logistical arrangements in the Union Territory to run the project.
How will this partnership benefit the company?
Abbott’s strategy in India revolves around increasing access — meeting medical needs, ensuring the healthcare community receives appropriate information and ensuring patients have access to our medicines — as well as sustainable business growth.
Abbott partners with the Union Territory of Puducherry in its endeavour to implement a comprehensive, patient oriented and outcome-driven end-to-end healthcare solution.
This partnership is an effective approach, leveraging Abbott’s diversified healthcare expertise in areas such as diagnostics and pharma therapies to build patient awareness, public health capability and use existing public health infrastructure to better manage NCDs.
Do you wish to replicate this model elsewhere?
Puducherry will serve as a model Union Territory to address issues of disease awareness and management, and implement unique solutions that will empower the public-health ecosystem to drive better health outcomes for patients, ensuring better healthcare for people and this reduce the disease burden. The partnership with Government of Puducherry is first-of-its-kind in the country and I believe some of the other progressive states would look to leverage similar integrated healthcare approach as it accelerates greater citizen access to healthcare solutions. We do look forward to working with other governments but currently our key focus is Puducherry.
How do you plan to monitor the impact of the initiative? Are you planning to take support of a disease management tool for the same?
This partnership for integrated health management is the first-of-its-kind to be initiated by a government in India to capture and assess reliable population level screening/monitoring data. This data will help to create health risk maps to forecast the burden of a number of diseases, facilitate early intervention, and ultimately help reduce disease burden in the Union Territory of Puducherry.
Abbott will provide access to an internationally recognised disease risk assessment tool. The risk assessment tool — know your number (KYN) — is an internationally-recognised tool, which will help the Government of Puducherry assess lifestyle diseases at the patient and population-based levels. The customised version for India allows the government to understand and stratify its entire ‘at risk’ population in a way never possible before. This is the first time that the tool will be used in the Indian public sector. It will support the identification of high-risk patients to aid better treatment decisions and help create a population-level database of diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol and thyroid disorders, thereby enabling a targeted approach to reducing the Union Territory’s lifestyle disease burden.
What are your plans in the future taking this partnership?
With this partnership, we at Abbott, look forward to working with the Government of Puducherry and make a difference to the lives of people in Puducherry.