Expertise in: Patient Rights

Dr Abhay Shukla is a public health physician, working on community and public health issues in Maharashtra since last three decades. He is Senior scientist at SATHI (Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives), while having membership of the Core group on Health of National Human Rights Commission. He is national co-convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, and is a Global steering committee member of the People’s Health Movement.

Abhay has been centrally involved in developing the framework of rights-based community monitoring and planning of health services in India. He has mentored this process for public health system accountability across Maharashtra since 2007 which now covers over a thousand villages, helping people to reclaim and majorly improve health service delivery. He has also mentored the development of Community Action for Nutrition (CAN) processes since 2017, which have led to significant positive impacts and substantially reduced malnutrition in over 400 villages in tribal areas across Maharashtra.

Abhay led the drafting of the national ‘Patients’ Rights Charter’, adopted by NHRC and the Union Health Ministry. He has authored / co-authored various publications on the health system in India, including the popular book ‘Dissenting Diagnosis’ (published by Penguin) which exposes malpractices in the private medical sector in India. He is one of the founders of the national network, Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Healthcare. Currently he is researching corporatisation and financialisation of healthcare in India, while campaigning for right to health, public health system accountability, and social regulation of private healthcare sector.

Abhay has recently co-authored two papers for UNU-IIGH – one on Corporatisation of private healthcare in India promoted by globalised investments, and another on Effects of corporatisation on clinical practice in Private healthcare institutions.

He led a team which facilitated large scale audit of private hospital bills of COVID patients, leading to unprecedented refund of overcharged amounts by private hospitals to patients. He represents the Indian region in the People’s Health Movement global steering committee. He is actively involved in campaigns for right to healthcare, accountability of public health services, resistance to healthcare privatisation, social regulation of private healthcare, rights of frontline health workers, and advocating for a system of Universal Health Care.