Ritik Gupta
Amidst coronavirus pandemic, social distancing is a dispensation for the neglected as if they do not go to work and earn their daily wages; their family would die from very starvation. It is erroneous for them in order to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, but, whilst, effortless for to pass away from coronavirus rather than dying of hunger. However, deliberating upon the former, a consequential question arises – what if they get infected, and it is much evident that they would not have the money as many of them are from the impecunious communities and thus, do not have that much money to give themselves a pleasure of the treatment in elite hospitals seeing that private hospitals are asking three to five lakh for admitting infected patients.
The World Health Organization (WHO) promulgated COVID-19, a pandemic as before as long ago as 11 March 2020 but, incongruously, India repudiated the proclamation and rebuffed to label it as a national emergency, thus, operations ran as usual. At some point, corollaries were very much anticipated and foreseeable but were overlooked like anything after even knowing the standing of our country’s health care system as India outlays, indeed, only 3.66% of GDP as per Organization for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD) on its ‘public health’. Moreover, this catastrophic pandemic is a souvenir of the significance of prioritization of the public health sector in a country, even undeveloped land like Nepal does outlay 6.29% of their GDP on their health care system, and this is more of a lesson to learn for India. Advanced economies like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom also spends 16.9%, 11.14% and 9.76% of their GDP on health care, respectively. Conclusively, India’s economy necessitates a big dose of health spending. Disappointedly, In FY20 the per capita capital expenditure per person was less than 200, with states spending below 1% of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP).
Another impediment in the preclusion of COVID-19 is very much reckless as it contributes to the destruction of very public health. According to some sources, doctors and their medical staff in hospitals are not being provided with the indispensabilities, including necessary masks to safeguard themselves and, consequently, patients imparting symptoms of coronavirus were being disdained. As a result, this can critically boost up the current numerals of coronavirus patients.
If we take a glimpse on the standing of the government hospitals in India, then it comes out that there is one government hospital bed for every 2,150 people, one state-run hospital for more than 92,500 people. Indeed, there is one allopathic doctor for every 10,926 people – minimum recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and in total, approximately a million to treat the population of 1.3 billion people. Ironically, only 10% of those works in the public sector show National Health Profile 2019. According to the researchers of The Centre For Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP), India has 2.3 ICU beds per 1, 00,000 persons (approximately).
It is much manifest from the above numerical scrutiny of India’s healthcare system and, unequivocally, it is not prepared for the health upheavals. It needs to ramp up its conservative testing and has to pursue social distancing, or else, corona would be a parasite to our country.
References
- Despair in a Package: How a Private Hospital in Delhi Tried to Fleece a COVID Patient
- COVID-19 in India: Doctors demand protective gear
- COVID-19 | Is India’s health infrastructure equipped to handle an epidemic?
- Advancing Health and Wellbeing Through Independent Research
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