To strengthen the national health system response to address comorbidities across the continuum of care, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) and WHO Country Office for India organized a joint consultation from 26-27 September 2013.
Present at the inauguration were Mr K Desiraju, Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India; Dr Nata Menabde, WHO Representative to India, and Ms Shakuntala Gamlin, Joint Secretary, MOHFW.
Speaking at the forum, Dr Nata Menabde, WHO Representative to India, said, “Chronic diseases combined with comorbidities are a growing challenge in India. Multimorbidities pose an additional challenge. Health systems, therefore, have a task at hand i.e., to manage patients with new comorbid and multimorbidity disease patterns, and to do so, a smart health system response is the need of the hour.”
Mr C.K Mishra, Additional Secretary, MOHFW and Mr Anshu Prakash, Joint Secretary, MOHFW joined at the closing plenary.
The forum helped in assessing the impact of comorbidity and multimorbidities on the health system and deliberated on policy and systemic changes needed to deal with these epidemiological realities.
This meeting was aimed at creating a platform of experts working in the field of comorbidities. The specific objectives were to identify challenges in integration of service provision for communicable and noncommunicable diseases and their comorbidities, and finding ways in which comorbidities can best be addressed. It also explored areas that require further research in comorbidities.
The meeting was attended by over 50 national and international participants representing the health ministry, state governments, bilateral donors, research institutes and academia.