Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: India accounts for over half of the estimated 100 million people pushed into poverty worldwide every year due to out-of-pocket expenses on healthcare, a joint report on universal health coverage by the World Health Organisation and World Bank has revealed.

While figure on India is not surprising as the Ministry of health and family welfare’s own figure of the country’s affected population, calculated through a different methodology is about 63 million, the WHO-WB report for the first time allows a comparison with a global number.

The document — Tracking Universal Health Coverage: 2017 Global Monitoring Report — that has been published in Lancet Global Health shows that currently, 800 million people spend at least 10 per cent of their household budget on health expenses for themselves, a sick child or another family member.

Quick stats

India’s rank on Universal health care among 100 countries - 56

People pushed to extreme poverty every year in India due to healthcare expense- 49 million

Physicians per 1000 persons in India - 0.7

Psychiatrists per 1,00,000 persons in India - 0.3

Surgeons per 1,00,000 persons in India - 2.6

Hospital beds per 10,000 persons in India - 6.6

Percentage of people who spend at least 10 percent of their household budgets to pay for healthcare - 17.33

India’s expenditure on health care - 1.15 per cent of GDP

[Source - Tracking Universal Health Coverage: 2017 Global Monitoring Report: World Health Organisation, World Bank]

For around 97 million people, of whom over 49 million are in India, these expenses are high enough to push them into extreme poverty, forcing them to survive on just $1.90 (Rs 122) or less a day.

According to the report, more than 1 billion people live with uncontrolled hypertension, over 200 million women are inadequately covered for family planning, close to 20 million infants do not get the required immunisations to protect them from diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

The report also highlights that 17.3 per cent of India’s population spends over 10 per cent of household income every month to meet healthcare expense while around 4 per cent of the population ends up spending over 25 per cent of family income for the same.

Priya Balasubramaniam, a specialist in universal healthcare who works with the Public Health Foundation of India, a health research institution in New Delhi called the findings of the report “startling”. “It just shows that how underfunded our public healthcare system is and how poor do we fare compared to even other developing countries in the world,” she told this newspaper.

“Its urgently required on the government’s part to give a big push to health insurance in the country,” she added.

In a sobering revelation earlier this year, the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, under the health ministry, had reported that only 27 per cent Indians ( 35 crore) possess some form of health insurance.