It is no question that India is a developing country of great diversity. As the second most populous country in the world with 1.25 billion people, home to more than twenty official languages and several major religions of the world, the multiplicity of India seems endless. However, as one delves deeper into the country of India, one may find disparaging inequality among the population, especially in the health sector. One may just imagine how immense of a task it is for the federal democracy of India to ensure equitable healthcare for all of its people considering the large population, numerous and varying socio-economic classes, and inequities between the urban and rural populations. Thus, as a group, Avery, May, Jasmin, and I were quite
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The crude birth rate is 20.4 per 1,000 people, but the crude death rate is about 8 per 1,000 people (ruralpovertyportal.org). The infant mortality rate is 38 per 1,000 infants and the under-5 mortality rate is 48 per 1,000 children (data.worldbank.org). As of 2012, 60% of the population died because of non-communicable diseases and 38% of people died of communicable diseases (data.worldbank.org). To put these statistics into perspective, India falls behind many first-world and developing countries and is actually on par in several of the aforementioned statistics with numerous underdeveloped countries in Africa and around the world. Although, there has been gradual increase in the improvement in the standard of living in India, the prevalence of certain diseases has decreased, and the overall healthcare of the country is ranked higher than it was in past years, India still has to deal with great inequalities within the country itself (numbeo.com, …show more content…
The constitution of India states that each state is primarily responsible for administrating healthcare and health education for its people, although, the government does create five-year plans that determine how a state’s health budget and priorities. The central government is supposed to provided technical and administrative services. As a whole, the nation’s main goal is to achieve universal healthcare coverage, as stated in the National Health Policy of 1983, but there are great discrepancies in “quality and coverage of medical treatment in India” that impede this (internationalstudentinsurance.com). Health expenditure makes up about 4-5% of India’s total gross domestic product (GDP) (ruralpovertyportal.org). However, only 27-30% of the total health expenditure is spent on public healthcare (data.worldbank.org). When considering the fact that 67-75% of the population lives in rural areas basically living on or near poverty levels and that private healthcare is inaccessible or too expensive for these people, it becomes clear that public health services are a necessity and sometimes the only option for most of the rural
The crude birth rate is 20.4 per 1,000 people, but the crude death rate is about 8 per 1,000 people (ruralpovertyportal.org). The infant mortality rate is 38 per 1,000 infants and the under-5 mortality rate is 48 per 1,000 children (data.worldbank.org). As of 2012, 60% of the population died because of non-communicable diseases and 38% of people died of communicable diseases (data.worldbank.org). To put these statistics into perspective, India falls behind many first-world and developing countries and is actually on par in several of the aforementioned statistics with numerous underdeveloped countries in Africa and around the world. Although, there has been gradual increase in the improvement in the standard of living in India, the prevalence of certain diseases has decreased, and the overall healthcare of the country is ranked higher than it was in past years, India still has to deal with great inequalities within the country itself (numbeo.com, …show more content…
The constitution of India states that each state is primarily responsible for administrating healthcare and health education for its people, although, the government does create five-year plans that determine how a state’s health budget and priorities. The central government is supposed to provided technical and administrative services. As a whole, the nation’s main goal is to achieve universal healthcare coverage, as stated in the National Health Policy of 1983, but there are great discrepancies in “quality and coverage of medical treatment in India” that impede this (internationalstudentinsurance.com). Health expenditure makes up about 4-5% of India’s total gross domestic product (GDP) (ruralpovertyportal.org). However, only 27-30% of the total health expenditure is spent on public healthcare (data.worldbank.org). When considering the fact that 67-75% of the population lives in rural areas basically living on or near poverty levels and that private healthcare is inaccessible or too expensive for these people, it becomes clear that public health services are a necessity and sometimes the only option for most of the rural