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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Health budget may go up by 2% by Kounteya Sinha

Health budget may go up by 2% by Kounteya Sinha

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published Published on May 8, 2011   modified Modified on May 8, 2011
India plans to increase its allocation for health to 2%-3% of its GDP over the next five years.

Public spending on health was 0·94% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004–05, which was among the lowest in the world.

Private expenditure on health in India is about 78% as compared to 14% in the Maldives, Bhutan (29%), Sri Lanka (53%), Thailand (31%) and China (61%).

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday owned up to the growing health burden.

He said, "Years of prolonged under funding of the public health system and dependence on the private sector has pushed the cost of healthcare, and has also affected access. There is more than Rs 3,000 expenditure in government hospitals in rural areas during every hospitalization, which is met out of pocket. The out-of-pocket expenditure in the urban areas and in private hospitals is two to three times higher."

He added, "The total allocation for the health sector is likely to be 2%-3% of our GDP during the 12th Five Year Plan."

According to a recent paper in the Lancet, health services in India's public sector, which can be accessed free or for a nominal fee, are grossly inadequate. Consequently, most Indians have to access private healthcare that is expensive, unaffordable and even unreliable. Good-quality healthcare in the private sector is also not available, particularly in rural and other remote parts of the country.

Azad on Saturday said the private sector has drawn flak because of high cost of treatment, its reluctance to reach rural areas, and hence ends up catering to only a small section of the population.

In rural areas, private sector accounts for 58% of all hospitals, beds (29%), doctors (81%) and outpatient cases (77%). The corresponding figure for the urban areas is 80%.

"The private sector brings with it bed capacity, skilled human resources and some degree of efficiency. Both public and private sectors need to coordinate their investments and growth in the health sector for larger public interest," Azad said.

The nation is also facing an acute shortage of trained medical manpower. Azad said he envisages availability of 50,000 MBBS seats (as against 35,250 seats currently available) and 25,000 post-graduate seats (as against 20,000 at present) within the next three years. "We will also be training 22,000 nurses annually," he added.

Dr A K Shiva Kumar, one of the primary authors of the Lancet paper, has said nearly 39 million people in India are pushed to poverty because of ill health every year. Around 30% in rural India didn't go for any treatment for financial constraints in 2004 — up from 15% in 1995. Similarly, in urban areas, 20% of ailments were untreated for monetary problems in 2004 — up from 10% in 1995. Loans and sale of assets helped in financing 47% and 31% of hospital admissions in rural and urban areas, respectively.

Between 1986 and 2004, the average expenditure per hospital admission increased three times in government and private hospitals. The sharp rise in prices of drugs has been the main reason for the growing cost of medical care, which more than tripled between 1993-94 and 2006-07.

The Times of India, 8 May, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Health-budget-may-go-up-by-2/articleshow/8192054.cms


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