Unhealthy competition

At a recent conference in Bangalore, senior health department officials spoke passionately about private-public partnership models to improve primary health care centres (PHCs). Just after that, the representative of a leading hospital chain seconded the opinion. But when he was asked to elaborate on his statement, the representative said the chain already had the equivalent of PHCs in the state, so it was not keen to participate in the tender. The inside story is that the project could go to one of the numerous hospitals run by politicians, so private hospitals don’t believe they stand a chance. In which case, it should be back to square one in no time for PHCs, quipped another hospital’s representative.