Highlights:
- A small step towards equity & quality: Over 50,000 public health facilities certified.
- Sabotage of NHS continues, Private Finance will built NHS health centres in the UK.
- Stanford Researchers find how mRNA Covid Vaccine triggers heart problems
Website: https://uho.org.in
On January 16, 2026, Dr. Amitav Banerjee, Chairperson of the Universal Health Organisation (UHO), highlights three key issues affecting primary healthcare.
A small step towards equity & quality: Over 50,000 public health facilities certified.
As of December 31, 2025, a total of 50, 373 public health facilities across all states and union territories have been certified under the National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS).
National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) are established and certified through a virtual assessment process designed to streamline evaluation for thousands of public health facilities, especially in remote areas. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has targeted 100% NQAS certification for all public health facilities by December 2026.
The virtual assessment process follows these structured steps:
1. Pre-Assessment Preparation
- Self-Assessment: Facilities voluntarily evaluate themselves against predefined benchmarks using NQAS checklists.
- Digital Application: Facilities ready for certification apply through the SaQsham portal.
- Document Verification: Required documents (e.g., statutory licenses, clinical protocols) are uploaded and reviewed by designated consultants at the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) before the assessment is scheduled.
2. Virtual Assessment Execution
- Opening Meeting: Assessors conduct a virtual meeting with healthcare staff to outline objectives and scope.
- Virtual Tour: Using live video calls (via platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams), assessors conduct a walk-through of the facility to observe infrastructure, hygiene, and patient care areas.
- Interactions: Remote assessors interview staff (doctors, nurses, community health officers) and patients to verify service delivery and adherence to protocols.
3. Scoring and Certification
- Weighted Scoring: Certification is based on a weighted average of different criteria:
- Virtual Assessment Score: 40%.
- State Certification Score: 10%–25%.
- Document Verification: 15%.
- Statutory Compliance: 15%.
- Patient Feedback & Outcomes: 10%–20%.
- Certification Levels:
- Fully Certified: Weighted score of 70% or above.
- Conditionally Certified: Score between 60% and 69%.
- Deferred: Score below 60% (requires a physical assessment for re-evaluation).
4. Validation and Maintenance
- Physical Verification: To maintain credibility, approximately 10% of virtually assessed facilities are randomly selected for physical onsite verification.
- Validity: Virtual certification is typically valid for up to three years, provided the facility submits regular surveillance reports.
- Continuous Monitoring: National and state-level webinar series and digital dashboards are used to provide ongoing support and real-time monitoring of quality standards.
While UHO welcomes this small step towards equitable distribution of quality health services one much keep in mind that this virtual and distant assessment may not bring out all the gaps in healthcare of the vast population in the hinterland. NQAS depends heavily on self-assessment and document uploads digitally. Very little weight is given to patient feedback and outcome (only 10% – 20%) which makes all the surrogate markers of quality pointless. UHO recommends that maximum weight should be given to patient feedback, the end user of healthcare.
It is common knowledge that quality health services are lacking in the rural areas and even at some district levels. Only an independent audit report can bring out the deficiencies. In this context the latest report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on India’s public health infrastructure highlights systemic gaps, revealing shortages in beds, essential medicines, and equipment, alongside issues with procurement, human resources, and policy implementation across various states (like UP, Punjab, Himachal, Rajasthan), with recent reports (late 2024/2025) detailing failures to meet standards and patient needs, pointing to a significant need for improved planning, infrastructure, and regulatory oversight for effective healthcare delivery.
NQAS which is based predominantly on self assessment and virtual inputs (only scores < 60% are evaluated physically), can give rise to complacency and neglect of the real issues as brought out by the latest CAG report.
We should not forget the deaths from contaminated water in Indore recently, the city which was adjudged the cleanest city in India, eight times in a row. This mishap conveys a lot about the shortcomings of such “feed good” assessments.
Sabotage of NHS continues, Private Finance will built NHS health centres in the UK.
UHO had reported in a previous newsletter dated 24 October 2025 of the pathetic conditions of the National Health Service in the UK. Patients were being treated in corridors because of lack of capacity in NHS hospitals.
Years of neglect in the UK of public health infrastructure and sabotage by vested interests has led to the present crisis. Successive governments under the influence of private players have not invested to increase the capacity of the NHS. General practitioners and family physicians are the backbone of the NHS. This ensures a more holistic approach to the patient by routing all specialist consultations through them than direct referrals to specialist and the super-specialists.
In the same newsletter last year the UHO had predicted that this deliberate running down the NHS appeared to be a strategy to continue the decay laying the ground to bring in private players.
Recent developments have proved us right. According to a report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the private sector will fund most newly built neighbourhood health centres in the UK. Around 40% of the centres to open by 2030 will be created by refurbishing existing NHS buildings with the help of private investment. Around 80% of these health centres will be delivered through public-private partnerships, with the remaining 20% funded through public sector investment.
Reacting to the news, deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA’s) General Practitioners Committee said using public-private partnerships was the “wrong approach,” as this will put profit before patients.
UHO concurs with this view and also expresses concerns that our health policy makers are also increasingly moving towards the private sector in healthcare delivery under the garb of public-private partnership .
Stanford Researchers find how mRNA Covid Vaccine triggers heart problems
Stanford scientists have uncovered how mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can very rarely trigger heart inflammation in young men — and how that risk might be reduced. They found that the vaccines can spark a two-step immune reaction that floods the body with inflammatory signals, drawing aggressive immune cells into the heart and causing temporary injury.
Scientists have pinpointed why mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can occasionally inflame the heart: an overactive immune response that briefly turns protective signals into damaging ones.
They have discovered the biological steps that explain how mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can, in rare cases, lead to heart inflammation in some adolescent and young adult males.
As expected, the director of the research laboratory, issued a statement that on the whole the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective and without them more people would have gotten sick, more people would have had severe effects and more people would have died.
While UHO welcomes that some research is being done on understanding the mechanism of myocarditis after the Covid-19 jabs leading to some unfortunate deaths in young people, who were never vulnerable to the virus, it can understand the tightrope researchers who investigate the adverse effects of the “holy” vaccine have to walk in order to save their career or even to get the study published in medical journals.
UHO recommends that our august research bodies like the ICMR and the AIIMS undertake similar in depths studies.
The weekly newsletters bring the updates on the science, battered and bruised during the pandemic, legal updates and impact of activism for a just society, across the world. These are small steps to promote Transparency, Empowerment and Accountability – the ethos of the UHO.
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