Challenges of Health Care Services in India: Need a Special Care

  • S Jayaselvi Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and Research Centre, Aditanar College of Arts and Science, Tiruchendur, Tamil Nadu, India
Keywords: health financing, GDP, Out- Of-Pocket expenditure, healthcare, Affordable care, Community-based care

Abstract

Good health is a prerequisite to human productivity and the development process. Health is the uppermost priority in every individual’s Life that lead to a happy life for an individual, but also necessary for all productive activities in the society. India’s health system that ranks 112 among 190 countries; one doctor for 1,700 people; 21% of the world's burden of disease, worsened by poor basic health and sanitation. While India has the fastest growing population, and an ambitious growth aspiration, it has always had a disproportionately small health financing. Globally, it is recognised that out of pocket is the most regressive form of financing the idea is that those who can afford healthcare, can, and those who cannot, should suffer. India has the worst record globally when it comes to out-of-pocket trend. The country has the lowest public spending in healthcare. Both the Centre and states need to increase their spending to meet huge gaps. Low spend on healthcare as a percentage of GDP is insufficient to meet the demands of a growing population and disease burden. Absence of universal health coverage and limited social health coverage has led to a high burden of Out- Of-Pocket expenditure (OOP) in India. OOP contributes approximately 86 per cent of private expenditure and 60 per cent of overall healthcare expenditure in the country. Due for a long time, the expectations of granting infrastructure status to healthcare and increasing the public expenditure from the current 1.2 per cent of GDP to over 2.5 per cent, have not been met and skill gap were also missing from the Budget. More concrete efforts are desired in this direction in order to bridge the mounting skill gap. In a nutshell, the healthcare industry sector remains far from being satisfied as the budget could not offer its due attention.

There is a large gap between healthcare delivery and financing in urban areas and rural areas. While a majority of the population resides in rural India (68.4 per cent), only 2 per cent of qualified doctors are available to them. The rural population relies heavily on government-funded medical facilities. This gap is exacerbated because the private and public systems do not complement each other. Affordable care (government hospitals or community-based care) suffers from quality issues and is unable to cater to the basic healthcare needs of the population. While some private care delivery centers and professionals are accessible to the needy, they are not affordable for a majority of the population. Often an individual has to reach out to multiple levels of care delivery providers (professionals, physicians, government hospitals, and private providers) to seek care for the same episode.

Published
2016-09-16
Statistics
Abstract views: 334 times
PDF downloads: 0 times
How to Cite
Jayaselvi, S. (2016). Challenges of Health Care Services in India: Need a Special Care. Shanlax International Journal of Economics, 4(4), 45-51. Retrieved from https://www.shanlaxjournals.in/journals/index.php/economics/article/view/783
Section
Article