Healthcare under Modi govt fared poorly: Report

Says govt failed to deliver quality services

Hyderabad: In a scathing attack, the premier medical science journal, The Lancet, on Friday criticised the Modi government for poor handling and the sorry state of affairs of public healthcare in India. The science journal censured the Centre for failing to deliver quality healthcare services to people most in need.

“Healthcare under Modi has fared poorly, as described in this week’s World Report. Overall, government spending on health has fallen and now hovers around an abysmal 1.2 per cent of gross domestic product, out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare remains extremely high, and flagship initiatives on primary healthcare and universal health coverage have so far failed to deliver services to people most in need,” it said.

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Titled ‘India’s elections: Why data transparency matter’, The Lancet highlighted the Centre’s reluctance to conduct major surveys that measure critical healthcare indicators and provide accurate and up-todate data, which is essential for health policy, planning and management.

“The collection and publication of such data in India have undergone serious setbacks. The 2021 census was delayed due to Covid, and for the first time in 150 years, a whole decade has gone by with no official comprehensive data on India or its people. The census is also the basis for all national and state-level health surveys,” it said.

“The periodic measurement of morbidity and out-ofpocket expenditure by the National Sample Survey Organisation is overdue, and there are no plans to conduct it. No reasons have been given for why the Sample Registration System survey report for 2021, which is India’s most reliable source of data on births and deaths, is delayed, or for why completed poverty surveys are not in the public domain,” the Lancet said.

Why is the Government so afraid of showing the real state of health? And more importantly, how does the government intend to measure progress when there are no data? Without access to recent and reliable data, democratic choices are impoverished, it said. The government’s key policy, Viksit Bharat 2047, will be driven by people and services. India must therefore focus attention and investment on health and education. And this can only be done with far more robust and open data. “The systematic attempt to obscure through the lack of data means that the Indian people are not being fully informed,” the Lancet said.