A new index developed to assess each country’s achievement on a range of health indicators ranks India at 143 in a list of 188 countries. This first global analysis to assess countries on sustainable development goal (SDG) health performance was launched at a special event at the UN General Assembly.
India’s Health care:-
- The Constitution of India makes health in India the responsibility of 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“.
- The National Health Policy was endorsed by theParliament of India in 1983 and updated in 2002. The National Health Policy is being worked upon further in 2017 and a draft for public consultation has been released.
- There are great inequalities in health between states. Infant mortality inKerala is 12 per thousand live births, but in Assam it is 56.
- According to a 2005 report, 60% of India’s children below the age of three were malnourished, which was greater than the statistics of sub-Saharan African of 28%.It is considered that one in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.
- The estimates varies across the country. It is estimated thatMadhya Pradesh has the highest rate of 50% and Kerala the lowest with 27%. Although India’s economy grew 55% from 2001–2006, its child-malnutrition rate only dropped 1%, lagging behind countries of similar growth rate.
- Malnutrition can be described as the unhealthy condition that results from not eating enoughhealthy food
- Despite health improvements over the last thirty years, lives continue to be lost to early childhood diseases, inadequate newborn care and childbirth-related causes. More than two million children die every year from preventable infections.
- Approximately 1.72 million children die each year before turning one.The under five mortality and infant mortality rates have been declining, from 202 and 190 deaths per thousand live births respectively in 1970 to 64 and 50 deaths per thousand live births in 2009. However, this decline is slowing. Reduced funding for immunization leaves only 43.5% of the young fully immunized.
Health Index 2016 :
India ranked 143rd among 188 countries, citing various challenges, including mortality rates, malaria, hygiene and air pollution.
- India was placed just ahead of Pakistan and Bangladesh which were ranked 149th and 151st respectively. India’s poor performance on hygiene, air pollution and mortality were among the factors that placed it lower than countries like Bhutan, Botswana, Syria and Sri Lanka.
- On safe hygiene practices, India has 8 on the scale of 0-100. India’s highest score has been 93 on the ‘war’ indicator front that assesses age-standardized death rate due to collective violence and legal intervention, per 100,000 population. Countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan have registered single digits.
- A nation’s SDG index score is based on a scale of zero to 100. In 2015, Iceland topped the overall list with a score of 85. The nation with the lowest score was the Central African Republic — 20. The United States had a score of 75, just behind Slovenia, Greece and Japan, all at 76. India’s score was 42. The US was ranked 28, above Estonia and New Zealand, while UK was rank 5.
- Another indicator is under-five mortality. The target for achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) was 2015. India is close to achieving the MDG goal of 42 deaths per 1,000 births and, in 2014, registered 45 deaths per 1,000 births. On a scale of 0-100, India has a score of 39 on this front.
- The SDGs are 17 universal goals, 169 targets and 230 indicators set by the United Nations in 2015 to guide a range of pressing problems including food and water security, poverty and climate change up to 2030. The SDGs follow and expand on the MDGs which lapsed at the end of 2015. Health is at the core of the SDGs and the third SDG aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages. Health-related indicators are present among 11 of the other 16 goals.