Budget 2018 india's healthcare crisis is holding back national potential

Budget 2018: India's healthcare crisis is holding back national potential

Budget 2018: India's healthcare crisis is holding back national potential on Business Standard.

India has the highest population of children stunted (low height for age) due to malnutrition, at 48.2 million

Budget 2018 India has the world’s highest population of stunted children–short for their age–and the country’s failing primary healthcare and overburdened tertiary care are ill-equipped to handle the crisis of childhood malnutrition, leaving India unable to fulfil its national potential.

This is the backdrop against which Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will present his government’s last full budget before the general elections in 2019.

Although India’s stunting rate has declined nearly 10 percentage points in a decade–from 48% in 2005-06 to 38.4% in 2015-16, an estimated 48 million Indian children are still stunted. At a time of declining economic growth and jobs, these children may have a greater disadvantage over those in other emerging nations with lower malnutrition and better healthcare. In addition, Inadequate public healthcare and healthcare expenses push an additional 39 million people back into poverty in India every year, this 2011 Lancet paper said.

Stunting is the percentage of children aged 0-59 months whose height for age is below minus two standard deviations from the median of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Child Growth Standards. It reflects chronic undernutrition.

Countries with high rates of stunting are likely to be less prosperous, according to a recent report.

“Until the federal government in India takes health as seriously as many other nations do, India will not fulfil either its national or global potential,” said a November 2017 editorial published in the Lancet, a medical journal.

India spends 1.4% of GDP on health, less than Nepal, Sri Lanka The Centre’s allocation for health rose 24% to Rs 473.53 billion in 2017-18–from Rs 383.43 billion in 2016-17. This is 1.15% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP). Including the expenditure by states, India spends 1.4% of its GDP on health.

Nepal spends 2.3% of its GDP on health while Sri Lanka spends 2%, data show. he National Health Policy (NHP) envisaged an increase in health expenditure to 2.5% of India’s GDP by 2025.

Without significant increase in its healthcare budget, India’s health targets–reducing its infant mortality rate from 41 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015-16 to 28 by 2019 and maternal mortality ratio from 167 deaths per 100,000 births in 2013-14 to 100 by 2018-

2020, and eliminating tuberculosis by 2025–seem difficult to achieve.

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