Healthcare

India spends less than Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka on health: Report

There is one allopathic doctor for 11,082 villages, the report says

The National Health Profile report 2018 shows that India’s public health expenditure, which is 1% of its GDP has marginally risen from 0.98% in 2014, but is still not at par than low-income countries that spend 1.4% on an average, reports Hindustan Times.

According to the annual report by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, India spends less than Bhutan (2.5%), Sri Lanka (1.6%) and Nepal (1.1%) on health expenditure. The CBHI is the health intelligence wing of the directorate general of health services in the Union ministry of health and family welfare.

The NHP 2018 report states that there is one allopathic doctor for a total of 11,082 people in the country’s villages. To counter this, the National Health Policy of 2017 gives the proposal of raising the public health expenditure to 2.5% of the GDP by 2025.

“We are working on it and are hopeful of meeting the target. It won’t happen overnight but we are on the right track. If you look at the healthcare indicators such as maternal and infant mortality rate, we are improving at a greater rate than the global target,” Union health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda has stated.

On a more positive note, the report has depicted reduction in the number of deaths due to malaria. Earlier, 104 people died in 2017 due to the disease compared to 331 death reported the previous year.

on July 2010, a UN backed measure of poverty had revealed that more of the world’s poor lived in India’s eight states than in 26 poorest African countries.

“There are 421 million MPI-poor people in eight Indian states alone – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – while there are 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined.”

“Our measure identifies the most vulnerable households and groups and enables us to understand exactly which deprivations afflict their lives,” said OPHI director Sabina Alkire. “The new measure can help governments and development agencies wishing to target aid more effectively to those specific communities.”

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