Inter-Relationship of Health, Communication, and Commerce: A Study of the Healthcare Sector in Odisha, India

2. Concern Of The Study

The Covid-19 has given a new dimension to the healthcare industry of India. On one hand the government both at the Centre and state have struggled to provide proper care to the people in accordance to the WHO guidelines. For the common people, especially in the rural areas, there has been few or no option of getting any substantive treatment. So far there are 48 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals with 7,328 beds and 710 ICU beds (Barik, 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the limited health capacity of the state. While people were provided special care for Covid-19, there were instances of death due to non-Covid-19 diseases owing to lack of adequate healthcare facilities. Despite of hard efforts by the state government for hiring health professional during the pandemic, still there is only one doctor for every 5,500 people (Kar, 2020).

The private hospitals, however, has converted the pandemic into an opportunity to multiply profit by coming up with special Covid-19 packages. The packages have also been promoted and marketed aggressively through mass media, particularly social and online media, in an effort to popularize them. Recent studies have also shown that the business of the private health sector has increased during the Covid-19 period. That makes it imperative to look back at the marketing and promotional strategies in which media plays a big role as effective communication leads to mobilization of people. According to Mheidly and Fares(2020), ‘Media channels become windows through which the public looks for accurate information, scientific sound facts, government decisions, and reactions of the general public’.