The Indian behaviour around healthcare access has changed quite drastically over the last couple of decades. As people migrated from their home towns to bigger cities, they lost touch with that one family doctor they would refer to for mild fever to emergency call. In the urban set up in the midst of career, aspiration and affordability, daily health took a back seat. People no more refer to doctors for smaller problems. Doctor visits are kept for emergencies. Today, medical advice arrives through Instagram reels and YouTube videos.
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In many households, a smartphone has become the first point of healthcare consultation long before a doctor is approached. This shows that healthcare was not about accessibility, it was more about trust. Trust comes with peer recommendation and familiarity. And now, due to lack of familiarity with the medical systems around, that trust has shifted from family doctor to online sources where the content creator I follow is the one I trust more than my doctor, even if subconsciously.
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Most online content is presented in emotionally persuasive language that is easier to consume than evidence-based medical guidance. They are created to get views - the dopamine of any content creator. Pseudo-doctors to home-makers with absolutely no medical background are spewing venom against the medical system and suggesting easy-fix treatments with kitchen ingredients are a part of our daily feed. Personally, I know of cancer patients deferring their treatments because various sources except their doctor convinced them that it is “slow moving” and “nothing much to worry about”.
From family doctors to smartphones
Now, add the complexity of “advertisement masquerading as user generated content” to the mix and you will realise health misinformation does not generate only from lack of education or age old superstition. It gets manufactured in millions, daily. Brands have figured out influencer driven content push sales today. So today we have “personal reviews” from the girl (or boy) next door who teaches us about hair structure to skin structure to DNA to Diabetes Reversal and side by side present the product that can keep us healthy.
While the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) mandates that influencers clearly disclose any “material connection” (payments, free gifts, or barter) in brand content by adding clear tags like #Ad, #Sponsored, #PaidPartnership, or #Promotion. But then, who keeps a check on whether it is done or not? And do the audience actually understand the meaning of these tags or notice them while checking a reel?
Personally, I feel this model of advertising a product is flawed and will not sustain in the long run. Brands will realise that they are losing credibility fast. But, will that bring people’s trust back to the doctors? No. We need to be brave enough to acknowledge this shift where health decisions are no more doctor-centric. Patients today continuously encounter medical information outside clinical spaces. Their understanding of health is shaped outside the clinical space, without consulting doctors. Today it may be social media creators, online communities, advertising ecosystems and recommendation algorithms, tomorrow it can be anything else.
Beyond misinformation
If we are brave enough to identify this problem, we should also know that it won’t go away on its own. It requires two long-term approaches - better policy implementation and better health literacy at every level.
At the policy level, we need to take a much firmer stance against those who profit by spreading fear and misinformation about evidence-based medicine. As a nation, we have tolerated the vilification of doctors and the healthcare system for far too long, both through verbal abuse and physical attacks, with little accountability. That needs to change.
The second and most important change we need is in how we look at health literacy. Health literacy is not the same as Health awareness. That is probably the biggest fallacy we fall for. Also, low health literacy should not be mistaken for lack of formal education. Even highly educated individuals can struggle to interpret medical evidence, understand risk or evaluate the credibility of online claims. Healthcare communication often remains deeply technical, fragmented and inaccessible to the average citizen.
Health literacy for all
This is where India’s policy makers need to think more broadly. Doctors remain central to healthcare delivery, but improving public understanding of health cannot be their responsibility alone. Physicians are already constrained by overwhelming patient loads and limited consultation time. Expecting them alone to counter the scale of digital misinformation is unrealistic.
Health literacy must become a multi-party responsibility.
Basic health literacy including understanding medications, nutrition labels, vaccinations, mental health and preventive care deserves greater integration within educational frameworks and should start at school levels.
Public health communication from policy makers also needs structural improvement. Public health efforts focused towards the underserved communities are both necessary and important. But the lack of health literacy in urban India is no less concerning. Doctors practicing in some of the country’s most developed cities often narrate experiences that are both frustrating and revealing at the same time.
An orthopaedic surgeon once mentioned to me that his clinic often ends up looking like a vegetable market by the end of the day because patients arrive bandaged with cabbage leaves, spinach and other home remedies popularised through viral social media reels - many of which have repeatedly been fact-checked, yet continue circulating widely online.
A shared responsibility
Hospitals – both private and public – need an improvement in their flow too. Educating the patient before treatment should become a company motto. It reduces the stress on doctors and builds up for a much better outcome.
Brands and Pharma companies need to join the effort too. Health Literacy improved brand credibility. All the conspiracy theory based reels titled “5 things Big Pharma companies won’t tell you” is neither doing the medical ecosystem or the companies any good.
India’s healthcare ambitions are rightly focused on expanding infrastructure, increasing insurance coverage and strengthening medical capacity. Yet healthcare systems cannot function effectively when large sections of the population remain vulnerable to misinformation, confusion and poor health understanding.
The next phase of public health reform in India must therefore move beyond the conventional metrics of hospital beds and doctor-patient ratios. In an era where millions consume health information through screens every day, public understanding itself has become a critical healthcare infrastructure challenge.
The country certainly needs improvement in its healthcare system. But it also needs something equally important: a society better equipped to understand health itself.
(Sudipta Sengupta, Founder & CEO, The Healthy Indian Project)
