INDIAN HEALTHCARE

 The pandemic has hit us where it hurts.

It has made us people wonder why so little is spent on Health in our country !

We have been spending less than one percent of our GDP for aeons , till few years back it just crept slowly to 1.26 %

The National Health policy in 2017 planned to increase the allotment to 2.5 % by 2025 , which means the increase needs to be

0.3 % every year but in reality it has just gone up by 0.02 % from then !

Lets see how much other nations give for health .

Brazil is a developing country but spends

8 % for health .

US spends 16 % but its health system is insurance based and costly and ignores the homeless and really poor etc .

US spends more for sophisticated centers of excellence , scientific research ,medical universities and its health costs too are many times that of India .

UK ,Netherlands,Australia,New zealand and Finland spend 8 % of thier GDP to health .

while France ,Germany,Switzerland ,Japan and Canada spend 10 % of their GDP on health .

Even Pakistan and Bangladesh spend 3 % !!

Our National health policy recommends states to spend 8 % of thier outlay for health.

Most states dont even spend 5 %

In the healthcare acess and qaulity index published by Lancet India is 145 th in rank out of 195 countries .

China is 48 ,Bangladesh 133 ,Sri lanka 71 !!

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Such a lame health care system cannot respond well to sudden catastrophic exigencies like this pandemic .

Of the promised 2.5 % allotment to health by 2025 if at all it happens 70 % is needed for public health not for ivory towers .

Our Doctor patient ratio is 1:1404 ie for every 1404 patients there is one doctor that too in urban areas

in rural areas its 1:10926 ie every 10000 patients have one doctor !!

The general response to this by politicians and common man is most doctors dont work in rural areas .

They would , if with adeqaute funding facilities for basic comforts education for thier children and reasonably well equipped medical centers to work in and a decent salary

There are huge number of doctors passing out of numerous medical colleges in the country and many are poorly paid and overworked though very few want to stop thier studies but plan for PGs .

They should get incentives like a PG seat for working 3 years in rural areas and one year post PG by bond .

but most Govts have no such imagination of ideas and conviniently blame doctors .

The shortage is not only in doctors but in nurses ,health workers ,and allied professionals .

Most are poorly paid and exploited overworked in private centers and have no security from bodily harm from public or from employer abuse .

Medical Research is another big lacuna for the nation ,whose teeming medical colleges barring few only encourage rote learning and MCQ tutoring with scientific enquiry even discouraged ,

unlike the US where its encouraged.

The Govt gives nothing much to spend on medical research ,on efficient data maintenance and medical electronics for documentation and reserach though its improving .

India is known for its medical and nursing skills and is one of the most economic in the world in medical costs with the best in skills .

Medical tourism in such a country should be a money spinner but unlike other countries like Singapore ,Malaysia,Thailand etc the Govement is not proactive in this .

We do have great strengths in a succesful primary health and immunisation programme for all our complexities but more funds are needed to strengthen these .

Its time our Goverment started thinking where we can cut our expenses in order to give it to health

Though roads cannot be stopped Bullet trains can

Though IT parks need to be built statues dont .

Though we need security spending for our VIPS there is no justification for hundreds of cars accompanying every CM as he roams around and gun toting commandos as a prestige symbol .

Defence is again something we cannot reduce as we need our nation to be secure but its time we focussed on where we can reduce our expenses .

This pandemic has rudely shaken our health care and exposed its inadequacies .

Once we get over it ,its time we sat together to correct those deficiencies to reach our goals in Health .