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- COUNTER VIEW: Move from medical tourism to medicine
This story is from September 15, 2007
COUNTER VIEW: Move from medical tourism to medicine
Multi-speciality hospitals will cut into public health, unless the government lays deliberate emphasis on the latter.
Doctors will be weaned away from specialising in ailments that concern the masses at large, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and gynaecological disorders, to concerns that affect a section of people, such as obesity, plastic surgery and so on.
India's growth story will mean very little, if it does not translate into improvement in life expectancy and control of killer diseases. For every 1,000 persons there is one hospital bed. Similarly, there is one doctor for nearly 1,700. This is all the more distressing, given the India's health and morbidity indicators.
TB claims 4,00,000 lives every year. Infant mortality and maternal mortality rates, at 54 per 1,000 live births and 301 for 1,00,000 live births, respectively, are higher than even developing country levels, while life expectancy remains a laggard at 63. With such a gross mismatch between demand and supply of health services, mass health care must be awarded top priority.
Private hospitals should provide a certain minimum number of free beds. As a case before the Delhi high court on this issue argued, private hospitals are given land at below market rates, if not free of charge, and are therefore bound by social obligations.
It is in large measure due to the shortage of government hospitals that health spending has become a major cause of indebtedness. Medical tourism will accentuate the shortage.
Per capita state spending on health happens to be lowest in less developed states, where, in fact, the demand for health services is acute. Annual health spending of the Centre and states, at 1.39 per cent of gross domestic product, is abysmal.
The Centre and states should raise health expenditure at least by three times to about Rs 1,70,000 crore per annum before they focus on medical tourism.
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