Healthcare sector in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh better than India: Study

06 March, 2013

India is the worst performer when it comes to healthcare sector, ranking way below China, Sri Lanka and Brazil who are the peers and neighbors of India. This was revealed by the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study (GBD 2010), a collaborative project led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

The study was done on 187 countries around the world and includes the causes of deaths and disabilities across different age groups and sex. China and Sri Lanka were seen in the top list, followed by Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. But India and Pakistan were spotted at the bottom of the list with India often beating Pakistan in the race to the bottom, reported The Times of India.

Previously, only infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and diarrhea were the causes of mortality but now both infectious and non-infectious diseases, metal health and malnutrition are also adding up as the cause for mortality. In India, road accidents are the leading killers of men while suicides are the biggest cause of death among women.

When this citizen journalist asked Dr. Narendra Saini, Secretary General at Indian Medical Association about the performance of India in health-care sector, he said, “The health care sector needs more funds.” He also pointed out to the recent health budget and said that only 0.9 percent of GDP is provided to the health sector, whereas the need is somewhere around 3 percent of the GDP, which is 300 percent more than what the government has issued now.

Dr. Saini also said that the national health policies provided by the government only fulfill 25-30 percent of the requirement of an individual and the remaining 70-75 percent is the pocket expense of the patient. “Right to health is to be provided to every individual, and the health industry should be given an infrastructure status, which is the only way out for its improvement,” Dr. Saini said, adding, “IMA is striving for affordable, accessible, timely and quality health care for all and to achieve this public-private partnership in health-care sector is needed.”