The devastating Covid-19 health crisis has exposed the inadequacy of our health services. It has brought to light how ill prepared we were to face pandemic situations despite being a favourite destination for medical tourism. We do not have enough beds, oxygen plants, health workers and above all a majority of our medical facilities are located in big cities, while rural India wherein 70 per cent of our population lives, has remained utterly neglected during the last seven decades. A careful study of various health indicators will prove this, as urban India projects better figures in life expectancy, child mortality, nutrition, etc. The pandemic necessitated an urgent solution to the existing inequality in our health services. Otherwise in the future too, we will find ourselves ill-equipped once again incase of possible new pandemics, as diseases don’t discriminate between urban and rural populations.
In-order to have equal healthcare facilities all over the country what the nation needs today is huge government spending in this sector. Primary health centres, equipped to deal with public health issues should be established in all major villages, wherein medical facilities should be available 24X7. At present, there may be some health centres in rural areas, but those centres exist only on paper. It is common knowledge that the doctors posted in those centres rarely visit the place of their posting, they prefer to stay in urban areas where this noble profession is more lucrative. As a result, people living in remote villages have no other option but to visit nearest cities for treatment of their near and dear ones. If India wants to have an effective healthcare system, the urban-rural divide in the health sector should be bridged.
As long as this gap exists, it will make various welfare schemes initiated by the government meaningless. For example, Ayushman Bharat is the one of the flagship programmes of the present day government and undoubtedly the world’s largest government-funded healthcare programme, however, it did not help majorly in treating covid-affected people during the pandemic. As per government records, only 6.05 lakh people availed covid treatment under this much-touted scheme in between March 2020 to June 2021. The poor performance of Ayushman Bharat highlights that not many healthcare facilities exist in rural areas and so called super-specialty hospitals in cities and towns were not interested in recognising the scheme as that would eat into their profits.
Thus, more welfare schemes are not the answer to meet the crisis. If we want to ensure proper medical facilities to all those who live in rural India, proper financial allocation must be given to this sector. At present, among various nations of the world, India ranks 154th in health spending. A more astonishing fact is that the same India ranks tenth in worldwide medical tourism index. These two opposing pictures prove the existence of a very wide urban-rural divide in the healthcare sector in India. Policy makers need to make all efforts to plug this gap at the earliest, so that India can soon be counted amongst the world’s ‘healthy nations’.