A report titled the ‘The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence Guiding Policy’ by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation in the University of Washington puts India at the bottom of the table compared to its neighbouring countries when it comes to death rate and life expectancy.
When it came to age-standardised death rate, per 1 lakh of population, India ranked 155 out of 187 countries in 1990 and while the number of deaths fell by 2010 from 1,447.43 to 1,096.92, it still lagged behind neighbours.
All neighbouring countries did not improve their record but they continued to stay ahead of India. While India ranked 139, Pakistan was at 127, Bangladesh at 113, Nepal at 108, Bhutan at 107 while Sri Lanka and China were at 68 and 63 respectively.
The study noted that while the amount of deaths and people living with communicable diseases hadn’t increased between 1990 and 2010 there had been a drastic increase in the number of people who were suffering and dying from non-communicable diseases.
Comparing the number of life years lost due to various causes, the report notes that the main cause for people losing healthy years of their lives in India over the last twenty years was heart disease.
In 1990 non communicable diseases accounted for 31 percent of years lost among both genders but communicable diseases accounted for 43 percent of the number of healthy years lost. Disturbingly by 2010, the percentage of people affected by communicable diseases had not decreased but the number of people affected by non-communicable diseases spiked sharply.
Non communicable diseases by 2010 accounted for 45 percent of years lost by Indians but the authors of the report noted that the number of cases of heart disease (a 66 percent increase) and diabetes (a 93 percent increase) had seen a drastic rise.
Worryingly the report noted that the reporting of ailments like migraine, depression and low back and neck pain had also increased dramatically among Indians over the twenty year period.
And more Indians are also indulging in ‘self-harm’ and dying in road accidents. The rise in the number of people indulging in self harm had spiked by 136 percent while the number of people who suffered from health problems due to India’s more crowded roads had jumped by 63 percent over the 20-year period.
While the report can be used to argue about the rampant spread of lifestyle ailments like heart disease and diabetes, what is rather disturbing is that the impact of communicable diseases in the county has not reduced as much as expected, barring infant mortality. What it also shows with its staggering rise in statistics of people with depression and indulging in ‘self-hurt’ is that mental health facilities in the nation still have a long way to go in reaching people across the country.
As Firstpost had noted earlier the health policy in the nation presently lies deep in the doldrums with a lot of investment needed in the public healthcare system to make it universally accessible instead of the current system which forces people towards the private sector.
Even this year’s budget while promising a higher spending in the healthcare sector by the central government, will not perhaps help unless the state governments act on improving healthcare facilities within their domain rather than merely implementing a scheme to ensure they receive the funds from the central government.
“Instead of the vertical “national missions” which are essentially one-size-fits-all models, the centre should start using its health budget to incentivise better performances by the states. In an era of decentralised governance, wherein one should look for effective local service delivery, national programmes are an anomaly if it really tries to implement than provide technical advise and provide money, INN noted.
This new report only highlights the continuing problems of providing healthcare to Indians, who suffer irrespective of whether they have access to high-end or no healthcare. Whether it will result in change in the much ignored healthcare sector in India, however, remains in doubt.
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