Shakti-NHSRC Collaborate To Integrate Renewable Energy in Health Care

Shakti has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) to promote access to more equitable, affordable and quality healthcare through the adoption of renewable energy and DRE based electricity systems.

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has highlighted several existing systemic gaps in health services, especially to the rural poor. For example, over 39,000 Sub Centres, the first point of contact between primary healthcare system and the community, serving 230 million people in rural India lack proper electricity. Even without the crises, our health institutions face resource and technology constraints, with electricity bills draining their limited resources. The lack of adequate technology too impacts the delivery of health care by Primary Health Centers and Sub Centres.

Clean health infrastructure has the potential to bring huge dividends for health care in India. For instance, it provides flexibility to design systems that can cater to the power load of a health centre, increases reliability and performance, caters to critical loads such as vaccine refrigerators, and supplies services to remote and disaster-prone areas where access related challenges are most acute.

Working with NHSRC, Shakti is contributing to the development of a more enabling system to mainstream renewable energy and DRE in public healthcare services by providing technical support for policy design and implementation, facilitating the development of tools and frameworks and building the capacity of stakeholders in the health sector.