Solar Helped Remote Hospitals Function Optimally: WRI Report

Solar Helped Remote Hospitals Function Optimally: WRI Report

A latest report from the WRI-India, a climate and energy think tank, claimed that clean power from solar energy fueled through Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) systems boosted the capacity of remote healthcare centres nationwide. The report was titled ‘A Spoonful of Solar to Help the Medicine go Down’. 

 WRI-India recently released the report in New Delhi recently. The report was brought by a study of healthcare systems in six Indian states using 22 DRE interventions. It included states like- Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Meghalaya, and Odisha. The study tried to analyse the impact of solar energy on the healthcare systems in these states.  

The report said that the healthcare facilities benefited greatly from the DRE installations. The research illustrated how remote health facilities, which are either unelectrified or function with unreliable grid electricity, could access DRE to improve their service delivery and support more patients.  

“With its ground research covering some of the worst Covid-19 months, the study also builds a case on how DRE helped these remote hospitals function optimally during the pandemic, as access to reliable electricity improved their efficiency in admitting and treating patients, conducting tests and scans, and for vaccine storage, among other medical requirements. The report is based on extensive literature review, in-person interviews and field visits to the health facilities,” a release from WRI-India said.  

The researchers claimed that 125 out of 169 Sustainable Development Goals are intrinsically interlinked with energy access. Some of the major findings of the report included- 

1.  Solar energy enhanced and complemented the energy supply to health facilities in most cases, also bringing positive impacts in terms of reliability and affordability.
2.  Developing decentralized energy solutions for the health sector would require extensive analysis of the present and future energy needs of remote health facilities, in particular.
3. Publicly allocating funding through state budgets, specifically for public and not-for-profit health facility electrification, can help achieve universal health coverage, with support from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and philanthropic sources.
4. 4. Beyond DRE interventions, energy efficiency measures are essential to help optimize the energy demand, which will help design more robust solutions.