Human Rights Watch, a leading rights group, has said the latest UN maternal mortality estimates contradict the claim made by New Delhi that it is 'on track' in meeting goals for reducing maternal mortality. An assessment by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other UN agencies found that though India is 'making progress' in declining maternal mortality, it is not 'on track' in meeting its UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The...
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India’s development report card shows fuzzy priorities by Subodh Varma
On Monday, leaders from 191 countries will get together in New York to review the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) – a set of eight targets to fight hunger, disease and ignorance to be met by 2015. India has already prepared an interim report that shows mixed progress. But can we inch closer to achieving any of these targets in the remaining five years? Unlikely, if one...
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KEY TRENDS • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14 • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...
More »India's health by Shankar Acharya
Last week saw the publication by BS Books of the India Health Report 2010 (henceforth referred to as IHR10), edited (and mostly written) by Ajay Mahal, Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari. For anyone interested in India’s health status, access to health care and medicines, emerging health problems, the infrastructure of health services, medical ethics, health-care financing, government programmes and regulations and key issues in health sector reform, this 138-page report...
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Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...
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