Mr. James Wolfensohn
President,
World Bank

Special Secretary Health Cum Managing Director
PHSC, Punjab, India
phschd@ch1.dot.net.in

Dear Sirs,

The orders of the World Bank-funded Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC), 
Punjab, India to hike the user fee for health services and elimination of subsidized fee 
structure for low income groups is clearly another example of the insidious World Bank 
strategy of charging the poor when in fact its mission should be to deliver them services 
they could not otherwise afford.

India is a welfare state, and National Health Policy (NPH) emphasizes the role of the 
state in providing basic health care. The objectives stated in the project under which 
PHSC was created were to improve efficiency in allocation and use of health resources 
through policy and institutional development, improve the performance of health care 
system, increase coverage and effectiveness of services at the primary and secondary 
levels, and to better serve the neediest sections of the population. But practically it is 
resulting in denial of the right to health and undermining state responsibility in providing 
basic health care to its citizens. The poor and the women are worst hit with the increased 
costs of the treatment.

This is being done at a time when even U.S. Congress has passed legislation that strongly 
opposes this practice. We strongly condemn PHSC for its anti poor and anti women 
policies.

We demand that these orders be reversed immediately.

Sincerely,

Dr. Vineeta Gupta 
General Secretary, Insaaf International, Punjab, India
Email vineetag@ch1.dot.net.in