HEALTH-CARE IN INDIA 1. Introduction.

India has completed the first decade of the New Millennium, still beset with innumerable health problems compounded by a state of perpetual poverty, ignorance and population explosion. 75% of the population live in rural areas, where they are suffering from economic stagnation, agricultural underemployment without alternative employment opportunities and lack of health and sanitation facilities. 2. Areas of concern (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) Infant Mortality Rate stands at 55/1000 live births Maternal Mortality Ratio stands at 254/1000 live births 41.1% of Indian children are malnourished and underweight Total fertility rate stands at 2.7 Life expectancy stands at 63 years

(f) Resurgence of drug-resistant Malaria and Tuberculosis in certain areas (g) Substantial increase in the disease burden of non-communicable diseases with India professed to become the Diabetic Capital of the world. (h) Lack of synergisation in efforts towards provision of health, clean dinking water, safe sanitation and adequate nutrition (relative failure of multi-sectoral co-ordination) (j) Severe Demand-Supply gap in provision of patient care beds, with India having 70 beds per 100,000 people which compare poorly with the developing country average of 430 (k) WHO reports stating a gap of 1.4 million doctors and 2.8 million nurses in the Indian health-care environment (l) Relative in-attention towards Quality of Care within available healthcare infrastructure

3.

Generic alternative strategies (a) Community ownership of health-care, shifting the focus from hospital based technology intensive care to integration of preventive, promotive and curative services at the grass-root level. (b) Re-orientation of Doctors and drugs towards practising acceptable, affordable health care (c) Synergisation of health care with water/sanitation/nutrition at the operational level affiliated sectors like

(d) Institutionalisation of a democratic, decentralised and participative health care system with the community owning and training for its healthcare (e) Integration of the Indigenous System of Indian medicine with the mainstream by a process of creative synthesis (f) Effective Public-private partnership by encouraging private healthcare players to penetrate the rural health care market with innovative business models and affording them infrastructure status and other tax benefits (g) Harnessing Information Technology by effective utilisation of Telemedicine and virtual integration of a regionalized system of healthcare (h) Adoption of innovative financing models with widespread dissemination of health-care insurance and micro-finance of multi-sectoral co-ordination models (j) Lastly but not the least, introducing a Master macro-sectoral spending plan by the GOI, directing public resources to redress sectoral imbalances and allocate public health care resources in line with the priorities of the country (k) Initiating a country-wide Quality Movement in the Indian health-care system 4. Conclusion. Several initiatives like the NRHM, RCH programmes have been launched in the recent past to meet the Moreover, recent inflow of substantial FDI in the health-care sector sign. However, sustained long-term efforts will be necessary to system maladies of the Indian health-care system. and similar MDG 2015. is a positive address the