Multimorbidity- A major health challenge of 21st century
Collaborative approaches, coordinated efforts and community-based interventions to prevent and manage multiple disease conditions at the primary health care settings
People are living longer. While that’s great, longer lives mean a rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes and/or heart diseases, the persistence of chronic infectious diseases, and now, COVID-19. Growth in NCDs mean a rapid increase in the number of people suffering with underlying multiple medical conditions (or multimorbidity). Multimorbidity is a major 21st century health challenge.
Indians are increasingly dying of NCDs driven by multimorbidity. A key challenge for health care systems everywhere, particularly among under-served rural communities where 70% of Indians live, is development of an effective, people centric approach to management of multimorbidity.
Strengthening health systems is critical The George Institute is proposing a program of work to reorient the primary health systems to better prevention and management of multiple medical conditions. We propose a multifaceted intervention for multimorbidity management collaborating with four state governments across India, the National Health Systems Resources Centre, academic institutions and communities. This will involve development of the first ever national technical resource package to improve awareness and access to services and capacity of the Primary Health Centre workforce. The program will be technology-led with the goal to integrate primary health care in 52 Primary Health Centres reaching over 1.5 million people across the four States. A policy reform road map for the future will also be developed.
We are expecting that the technical resource guide and the community-based interventions will increase the understanding, management of high-risk people through our primary health care systems.
Help us to develop and implement interventions to manage multiple medical conditions in a rural primary health care settings.
