Hind Latex launches healthcare initiative

Pre, post-natal care at affordable charges for poor

Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL), a Government of India enterprise, launched a major initiative in reproductive and child healthcare (RCH) services through its innovative hospital network project called LifeSpring, in Hyderabad on Saturday.

Aimed at providing standardised healthcare services like deliveries, pre and post-natal care at affordable costs to low income families, LifeSpring initiative is designed in a four-layered social franchisee format.

At level-I, Hindustan Latex together with Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust (HLFPPT) will set up a hospital with all the physical infrastructure including equipment and laboratories and rope in private entrepreneurs in medical profession to provide healthcare services at the rates fixed by HLL.

At level-II, the private partner will build the hospital at his own cost and adopt the LifeSpring model along with all the parameters determined by the government body.

At level-III, there will be clinics across and at level-IV, LifeSpring's healthcare outposts will be set up in villages, to be run by private doctors and NGOs.

Terming the initiative as a revolution in the public healthcare sector, P K Hota, secretary, health and family welfare, Government of India, said that HLL was launching two level-I hospitals "" in Hyderabad and Kanpur "" to test the feasibility of the prescribed model. A sum of Rs 3 crore had been spent on these two hospitals and Rs 10 crore more would be released in due course, he added.

HLL wants to set up very few level-I hospitals as, according to Hota, the government does not want to create its own assets, but aims at setting up at least 200 level-II hospitals in the next two years.

The remaining two levels would be taken up as a movement across the length and breadth of rural India. A LifeSpring hospital would charge Rs 1,500 for ordinary delivery. The consultation fee would be just Rs 50.

Speaking on the occasion, M Ayyappan, managing director of HLL, said that though the country had advanced in several healthcare specialties, it was lagging behind in RCH, both in public and private sectors.