As Market Menagerie (Stanford University Press 2012) demonstrates, there is no simple one to one relationship between health industry organisation and health systems.
In 2012, Smita Srinivas guest edited a social protection special issue in Prayas, published by Sattva and convened some of the world’s best thinkers on healthcare systems in their wider social protection context. Pensions, healthcare, disability, occupational health and safety….these are addressed here with lessons for India in the 21st century. The full issue includes policy and practice contexts and these short essays by RKA Subrahmanya, Mukul Asher, Naila Kabeer, Francie Lund, Wouter van Ginneken, Armando Barrientos, and Carmelo Mesa Lago, and Smita Srinivas’s lead editorial.
Any health industry is a part of the wider health system in which health policy plays a critical role. States and countries that have strong health management systems overall, are able to deal with medicines supply, ventilator manufacturing, or PPE availability to frontline workers. Countries that have strong health industries have certain advantages at times such as this, but their weaker health policies may cause bottlenecks. The issues at stake are how we might think about the integration of industrial policies and health policies together, not separately.