Essay on the breakdown of the healthcare system of the entire world due to covid (250-300 words).
Answers
Explanation:
With growing number of coronavirus cases in India (and worldwide), policymakers have sprung into action – more information is being disseminated about preventive measures such as hand washing and not touching the face. Social distancing has been suggested as a tool to “flatten the curve”, or in other words, prevent the health system from being overburdened. Although the number of COVID-19 cases are still low in India, experts have warned against community spread of the disease which will lead to rapid and huge increase in demand for health facilities. Private healthcare is expensive and unavailable for many poor households in India which leaves public healthcare facilities as the only available option for them. For patients who are found to be COVID-19 positive, isolation wards are needed; additionally, for critical cases, intensive care is needed. Currently, almost all suspected cases of coronavirus are referred to government hospitals and it’s important to assess where we stand in terms of medical capacity to provide necessary healthcare to the affected individuals.
In this piece we focus on availability of government hospital beds[1] for major states in India. Using data from National Health Profile–2019, we observed that there are 7,13,986 total government hospital beds available in India. This amounts to 0.55 beds per 1000 population[2,3]. The elderly population (aged 60 and above) is especially vulnerable, given more complications which are reported for patients in this age group. The availability of beds for elderly population in India is 5.18 beds per 1000 population. In the heatmaps below, we show the state-level variation in availability of government beds in India.