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Centre urged to increase spending on health sector

Staff Reporter

‘The Government made this promise in its National Common Minimum Programme’
‘India needs over 13 lakh health workers to achieve its mandate of health for all’

NEW DELHI: Health experts and campaigners have urged the United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre to deliver on its promise of investing three per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), instead of the current 0.9 per cent, in the health sector in the forthcoming Union Budget.

“The Government made this promise in its National Common Minimum Programme. The Union Budget for 2008-09 is the last opportunity for the Government to show and prove that it does what it says. It must allocate at least the promised three per cent, instead of the abysmal 0.9 per cent, of the GDP to the health sector,” said Sandhya Venkateswaran of ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ at a press conference here over the weekend.

Health care activists and supporters of the campaign, which is a coalition of over 3,000 non-government organisations and networks across 23 States monitoring UPA’s health spending on the ground, also pointed out statistics to show how the “trickle-down” effect was not happening.

An activist, Ravi Duggal, said: “The Central Statistical Organisation (2004) estimated that out-of-pocket or self-financing expense accounts for a whopping 83 per cent of the total health expenditure. When the economy is growing at 9 per cent per annum, this is both regressive and unfair for people living below the poverty line or at the threshold of subsistence.”

A 2006 study by Oxfam estimated that India needs over 13 lakh health workers to achieve its mandate of health for all and to achieve its goal for the Millennium Development Goals.

Allocation

Stating that increased allocation for the health sector alone can help recruit and train the additional health staff required and set up new health sub-centres at the primary level to achieve the health service coverage envisaged in the Government’s ambitious national Rural Health Mission, Avinash Kumar, a health policy expert with the Abhiyan, said: “No private or voluntary agency has the resources or the infrastructure to ensure health for all, at least at the primary and secondary level.”

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