Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka Beat “Super Power” INDIA in Public Health Spendings

The National Health Profile 2018 puts India at a shameful spot in terms of public health spendings ahead only of Bangladesh in the South Asian Region.

By
EurAsian Times Desk
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The National Health Profile 2018 puts India at a shameful spot in terms of public health spendings. According to NHP, India only spends a negligible 1.02% on healthcare and public health. Surprisingly India’s expenditure on public health is even lesser than other South Asian neighbours like Sri Lanka and Bhutan. Despite being one of most robust global economies, India’s focus on public health is as good as being negligible. 

While India’s neighbours Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal spend 1.6%, 2.5% and 1.1% of their GDP respectively on healthcare, India spends only 1.02% of its GDP which is a very disturbing figure. The rapid population explosion in India and miserable health conditions in the rural parts call for a greater financial support to the healthcare sector. However, the National Health Profile 2018 puts India to shame.

Sweden Tops the Global List

Among countries with Universal Health Coverage, Sweden ranks the highest with 9.2% of GDP spend on public health. On this list of nations with Universal Health Coverage, Singapore is at the bottom as it’s expenditure on healthcare stands at only 2.2% of its GDP. But even  Singapore’s expenditure in terms of percentage share of its GDP is almost twice as that of India. Is India blatantly ignoring this crucial sector?

Only Bangladesh spends less than India on public health when it comes to Asia. Bangladesh spends a meagre 0.4% of its GDP on public health. In Asia, Maldives spends the highest on healthcare which amounts to 9.4% of its GDP. So, among the Asian counties, India is only ahead of Bangladesh in terms of expenditure on public health.

The National Health Profile 2018 also unleashes the fact that in India only 34% of the total population has a health insurance. So, only 43 crore people approximately have a health insurance in India. While the world average health expenditure that people pay from their pockets is 18.2%, in India people end up paying 67.8 of the Health expenditure on their own.

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