Chris Mary Kurian: How Kerala’s People-Centric Health System Built Over 24 Years Is Paying Off Now

By Dilip -
It has been more than two months since India reported its first Covid-19 case; on January 31, the Kerala government announced that a Malayali student who had returned from 
Wuhan had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. In the days since then, the disease has infected more than 2900 people across India and led to a national lockdown. While Kerala has till now reported 286 cases, behind Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra with 309 and 423 positive cases, its death toll is still comparatively low: 2 deaths (as compared to 26 in Maharashtra). 

The state has won praise for its adept handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 people around the world and overwhelmed health systems even in resource-rich countries. This has occurred even though the southern state faces challenges such as a high population density, a high proportion of the elderly (12.6% of the total population) who are particularly vulnerable to the disease and financial constraints that followed two devastating floods and the Nipah virus outbreak in 2018 and 2019. 

The Kerala government’s early preparedness to the pandemic and the investments it made towards widespread testing and surveillance bear testament to the state’s commitment to public health and welfare - an anomaly in the current national and political global climate. For over 60 years, Kerala’s health indicators - infant and child mortality rates, birth rates, life expectancy, sex ratio and maternal mortality ratios - have consistently topped the country, despite its middling economic achievements and high unemployment rates. Health economist V. Raman Kutty has attributed these health outcomes to a “tradition of support for health development” from successive state governments, irrespective of political leanings...
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/kerala-people-centric-health-system-coronavirus_in_5e875d55c5b6a9491835cb9e

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