Healthcare in Rural India: Challenges
Ashok Jhunjhunwala Suma Prashant Sameer Sawarkar
Rural Technology & Business Incubator, IITM, Chennai ashok@tenet.res.in
Reach of Healthcare in India
- Rural Context – Heavily urban biased healthcare resources
Rural Doctors to population ratio lower by 6 times Rural Beds to population ratio lower by 15 times Villagers spend 1.5 times more compared to urban counterparts for same illness Spurious drugs: 7 of 10 medicines in rural areas substandard / counterfeit
22 Million population pushed below poverty line annually due to healthcare expenditure alone, 40% of hospitalization expenditure funded by borrowed money or sold assets
Why Rural Healthcare…
700 million people living in 636K villages Preventable and curable diseases dominate the morbidity pattern; diarrhea, measles, typhoid 66% of rural Indians do not have access to critical medicine 31% of the population travel more than 30kms seeking health care in rural India a third of symptoms presented at the primary health setting might be psychosomatic in nature – “holistic approach is absent”
What is blocking Rural Healthcare delivery?
Not attractive enough for private sector
• Distributed population • Not enough money(?)
•Lack of quality of delivery in rural space •Focus on tertiary level of care, training specialists and not general practitioners •Distributed population/not enough money?
• Closer proximity to villages • Acquired trust of local people • Need direction to tackle issues based on preventive measures
Less efficient public sector
• Incentives missing
Lack of skilled health workers on ground Public Health Private Health Indigenous Health Systems System System Missing efficient distribution networks
No comments