The home ministry sanctions against Public Health Foundation of India and the partial relief granted last month are perfect examples of how ministries work in silos
Nine months after it was debarred from accepting foreign funding for alleged transgressions, health thinktank Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) has received a partial and conditional reprieve.
In an order last month, the public private partnership between the ministry of health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and some industry partners was allowed to receive foreign funds after obtaining prior permission and also subject itself to a quarterly review by a committee of health and family welfare. PHFI was debarred from accepting foreign contributions in April last year citing several financial irregularities but there are murmurs of some very “strong” IB observations too against the foundation that caused the action to be taken.
PHFI is covered by RTI and includes among partners not just the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but also Reliance Industries, Ranbaxy Promoter Group, Infosys Foundation and also several state governments including the governments of Gujarat, Telangana, Delhi and Karnataka
The nine month long impasse though has not shown the government in the most perfect light – the fact that two ministries, that of health and home, spoke in such differing terms on the same organisation and the fact that soon after the restrictions of PHFI, big hoardings went up in Lutyens’ Delhi, purportedly by the tobacco industry thanking government action, means that forever more every time the government of India’s commitment on prickly public health issues are in doubt, this episode will be recalled. One such prolonged tussle happened over the larger pictorial warnings on tobacco packs and if the government’s stance on the cervical cancer vaccine after the economic wing of the RSS raised question over it is any indication, there will be more such in the future.
In the “interim” order issued last month, the home ministry said it was necessitated as “…PHFI has been running five Indian Institutes of Public Health and has been working with some state governments and few departments of central government to execute some health projects. Therefore to avoid non-renewal on such projects…” Among the other conditions in the order dated January 25, is that PHFI will have to provide detailed information to the health ministry regarding utilisation of foreign funds every quarter.
In real terms though, very little has changed in the last nine months which is why there is little doubt that the action and its revocation are perfect examples of how the government’s left hand does not know what the right does. Moreover coming from a government that is not fond of rescinding its own decisions, this shows how the ministry that deals with internal security is weighed down by limited information and perhaps personal and institutional biases too.
PHFI is covered by RTI and includes among partners not just the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but also Reliance Industries, Ranbaxy Promoter Group, Infosys Foundation and also several state governments including the governments of Gujarat, Telangana, Delhi and Karnataka. PHFI’s team members are on various expert and technical committees set up by the health ministry on tobacco control policy, including pictorial health warnings, e- cigarettes, m-health initiatives of government on tobacco cessation. PHFI chairman Dr K S Reddy was part of the expert committee constituted on the directions of the Supreme Court in the Ankur Gutkha vs Indian Asthma Care Society & Others, to “undertake a comprehensive analysis and study of the contents of gutkha, tobacco, pan masala and similar articles manufactured in the country, and harmful effects…”
May be for now this one of a kind public health resource organisation will be allowed to finally do the work it is supposed to do.
