India has strengthened health infrastructure, expanded medical education and used technology to take care beyond the walls of institutions. Yet experience has taught me that healthcare remains truly inaccessible if it is not available when people need it.
Somewhere in urban India, a factory worker is postponing his annual health check for the third consecutive year. The clinic may be close to his home and the consultation affordable. But it closes before his shift ends and opens after it begins. This may appear to be a scheduling inconvenience. Multiplied across millions of working lives, it becomes a national health challenge and an economic problem hiding in plain sight.
India is at a defining point in its growth journey. As we advance towards Viksit Bharat, GDP alone cannot tell us whether we are building the foundations of enduring prosperity. The health of the people who will create that prosperity must matter just as much.
Chronic disease
Today, blood sugar levels are classified as high or very high among 20.9 per cent of men and 17.8 per cent of women. At the same time, 30.7 per cent of women and 27.3 per cent of men between the ages of 15 and 49 are overweight or obese. These figures do not sit outside India’s growth story. They reveal that the workforce expected to power our next economic leap is already carrying a growing burden of chronic disease.
For too long, health has been viewed primarily as social expenditure. I believe that nations become prosperous when their people are healthy enough to learn, work, create and contribute to their full potential.
Preventive healthcare is therefore not merely a clinical priority. It is national infrastructure. Its returns are measured in healthier working years, fewer avoidable hospitalisations, greater productivity and families protected from the emotional and financial trauma of illnesses that could have been detected earlier.
India has made significant progress in finding disease before it becomes catastrophic. Since 2018, Ayushman Arogya Mandirs have screened more than 42 crore people each for hypertension and diabetes, identifying 7.3 crore cases of hypertension and five crore cases of diabetes.
This is an achievement of extraordinary scale. But screening must be the beginning of care, not its conclusion.
Medication adherence
Average medication adherence among patients with non-communicable diseases in India is only 51 per cent. A major national hypertension programme found that 30.7 per cent of registered patients were lost to follow-up. When we lose the patient somewhere between diagnosis, treatment and follow-up, we have not completed our duty. Continuity of care must become as important as the first consultation.
There is encouraging evidence of what becomes possible when healthcare is designed around people’s lives. In 2020, women accounted for 59.8 per cent of consultations on eSanjeevani, India’s national telemedicine platform. This is particularly significant because women globally spend approximately 25 per cent more of their lives in poor health than men.
Similarly, decentralised hypertension programmes that moved treatment closer to patients increased blood-pressure control from 20 per cent to 58 per cent, while reducing missed follow-up visits from 61 per cent to 26 per cent. The lesson is clear: when care becomes easier to reach and simpler to continue, people are more likely to remain connected to it. This is why India must now expand its definition of healthcare access.
Affordability matters. Distance matters. Quality matters.
But time matters too. For a daily-wage earner, a medical consultation during working hours can mean lost income. For a working mother, a preventive screening may compete with both professional and family responsibilities. For an older person, every appointment may require the time and assistance of a caregiver.
Time matters
Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health has associated time poverty among women with higher odds of poor mental health, inadequate sleep and reduced physical activity. Time is not simply a matter of convenience. It influences whether people seek care, postpone it or abandon it altogether.
The practical implication is difficult to ignore. If preventive and planned healthcare is available predominantly when people are at work, delay becomes almost inevitable. India should therefore move towards a seven-day model of planned healthcare — one in which consultations, diagnostics, preventive health checks, follow-ups and appropriate planned procedures are available throughout the week.
This does not mean asking our doctors, nurses or technicians to work without rest. A seven-day healthcare system requires intelligent rostering, appropriate staffing, digital support and more efficient use of existing infrastructure. The principle is simple: institutions should organise themselves around the needs of patients rather than continually asking patients to reorganise their lives around institutions.
A seven-day model can also distribute planned demand more evenly, improve the utilisation of expensive medical infrastructure and reduce pressure concentrated within the conventional working week. Implemented at scale, India has the opportunity to pioneer a new model of access: comprehensive planned hospital care organised around a seven-day week. The significance lies not in adding one more working day. It lies in removing one more reason for a patient to delay care.
The economic case is equally compelling. If India’s four major non-communicable diseases remain inadequately addressed, they could result in approximately $3.55 trillion in economic losses by 2030. A broader estimate covering cardiovascular disease and mental health conditions places cumulative losses between 2012 and 2030 at $4.58 trillion.
Behind these numbers are lives cut short, people leaving the workforce prematurely, days lost to illness, diminished productivity and families carrying burdens that could often have been prevented. In healthcare, we frequently speak of the “golden hour” — the critical period in which timely intervention can save a life. India must now recognise that there is also a golden opportunity before us: to act before chronic disease diminishes the promise of our demographic and economic progress.
The next phase of India’s development will require roads, factories, digital infrastructure, capital and skills. But none of these can fulfil their purpose without people healthy enough to build, operate and benefit from them.
I have always believed that healthcare is not an industry alone. It is a national mission and a moral responsibility. As India prepares for its next great leap, we must begin to treat prevention, continuity of care and people’s time as national assets. When healthcare respects the realities of people’s lives, access becomes more meaningful, prevention becomes more achievable and growth becomes more inclusive.
India’s next great growth dividend can and must be a health dividend.
The writer is Founder and Chairman, Apollo Hospitals
Published on September 13, 2026
