The Hidden Truth
Governance Today|December 2016

We don’t speak about medical education and its role in nation-building.

Dr Dharminder Nagar
The Hidden Truth

In 2014, when during the government’s first health budget, slogans like “Health for All” and “Health Assurance” were spoken about, with great promise. However, over the past three years, the allocation to the health sector, as a part of the GDP has hovered around a little over 1 per cent. The aim should be to raise this to the level that the draft health policy has set out for us: to 2.5 per cent of the GDP. With the private sector coming in, as it has in a big way over the last decade, this takes the percentage investment to 4 per cent of the GDP.

Low investment means that at the very base, we do not have enough medical colleges to train doctors, nurses and support staff. Down the line then, we have only 0.7 doctors for every 1,000 patients. The World Health Organization guidelines stipulate that there must be at least 1 doctor per 1,000. The other problem that we encounter is the urban-rural imbalance. We don’t need data to tell us what is happening in rural India. Almost all care is happening at the primary level, with midwives and healthcare workers as the first point of contact with the community. They are no doubt doing the best possible job they can, but naturally, we need more doctors on ground, not just at a single primary healthcare centre where people come.

The need of the hour

This story is from the December 2016 edition of Governance Today.

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This story is from the December 2016 edition of Governance Today.

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