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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Covid has accentuated the private cost of India’s public failure -Vivek Kaul

Covid has accentuated the private cost of India’s public failure -Vivek Kaul

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published Published on May 3, 2021   modified Modified on May 10, 2021

-Livemint.com

The health crisis will boost the trend of India’s well-off opting out to create parallel infrastructure

On 2 May, the total number of active covid cases in the country crossed 3.4 million. The number was at 5,80,387 on 31 March, implying a jump of around 488% in a little over a month’s time. Unlike the first wave, this time around the well-to-do middle class has also been heavily impacted by the pandemic. Even the upper middle class and the rich are getting a feel of the real Indian system, or rather the lack of it.

As the 15th Finance Commission (FFC) pointed out in its report: “In 2018, there were 11.54 lakh registered allopathic medical doctors [and] 29.66 lakh nurses." The ratio of doctors to our population is very low, at one doctor for every 1,511 people, against one for every 1,000 people recommended by the World Health Organization. Further, India has one nurse for every 670 people against the recommended 300.

As of June 2020, India had just over 1.25 million allopathic doctors. The number of nurses stood at about 3.26 million, as of December 2019.

These are aggregate numbers, and the situation varies across different parts of the country. Kerala has 65,685 doctors for a population of 35.6 million. Jharkhand’s population is 38.6 million, but the state has only 6,837 doctors. Karnataka has 130,698 doctors for a population of 67.6 million. In comparison, Gujarat has 69,746 doctors for a population of 63.9 million. Uttar Pradesh has 84,560 doctors for a population of 237.9 million. Clearly, there is a great inequity when it comes to the availability of doctors. The same is true of nurse availability as well.

There is much more to health infrastructure than just doctors and nurses, but a look at this data suggests that India’s medical infrastructure is weak and distributed unequally. Even in 2020-21, the central and state governments spent just 1.8% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) on health, against the 1.4-1.5% of GDP earlier.

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Livemint.com, 3 May, 2021, https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/covid-has-accentuated-the-private-cost-of-india-s-public-failure-11620057164037.html


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