Greater private sector innovation, digital tools key to quality healthcare at low cost for poor in India: Gates

Greater private sector innovation and use of technology like digital tools would help India provide quality healthcare services at low cost to poor people, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said, listing priority areas of his foundation for the country.

In an interview to PTI, Gates complimented India on a range of programmes like digitisation of payments to benefit poor citizens, sanitation and polio eradication, adding his foundation is in the process of taking some of the successfully implemented ideas in the country to African continent.

Gates is currently on a three-day visit to India to review work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has been working in areas of health-care, sanitation, agriculture and financial services for the underprivileged people in India for over a decade.

In the health sector, the foundation has been supporting government agencies to meet ambitious goals of eliminating infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, lymphatic filariasis and visceral Leishmaniasis.

Gates said he is meeting private sector companies in both health and agriculture sectors in India to have an update about some of the innovations.

"Because, after all, providing healthcare at low cost, India needs a lot of great private sector innovation in that. And I'm sure a number of those will not just be applicable to India; there will also be things that are valuable for the work we do in other countries, as well," he said.

He further said: "Our biggest work has been broadly in the health area helping to get new vaccines introduced, helping to look at innovations in some of the disease-specific areas, like tuberculosis or visceral leishmaniasis (VL) or lymphatic filariasis (LF)."