Describe any two achievements of the health sector during the last fifty years.
Answers
The Indian Constitution makes the provision of healthcare in India the responsibility of the state governments, rather than the central federal government. It makes every state responsible for "raising the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties".[1][2]
The National Health Policy was endorsed by the Parliament of India in 1983 and updated in 2002, and then again updated in 2017. The recent four main updates in 2017 mentions the need to focus on the growing burden of non-communicable diseases, on the emergence of the robust healthcare industry, on growing incidences of unsustainable expenditure due to health care costs and on rising economic growth enabling enhanced fiscal capacity.[3] In practice however, the private healthcare sector is responsible for the majority of healthcare in India, and most healthcare expenses are paid directly out of pocket by patients and their families, rather than through health insurance.[4] Government health policy has thus far largely encouraged private sector expansion in conjunction with well-designed but limited public health programmes.[5]
A government funded health insurance project was launched in 2018 by the Government of India, called Ayushman Bharat.
According to the World Bank, the total expenditure on health care as a proportion of GDP in 2015 was 3.89%.[6] Out of 3.89%, the governmental health expenditure as a proportion of GDP is just 1%,[7] and the out-of-pocket expenditure as a proportion of the current health expenditure was 65.06% in 2015.[8]