Primary Health Care in India Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Primary Health Care in India - Essay Example The public health care infrastructure though is large it is not sufficient when compared to per capita number of physicians and beds for the population. Even the rate of outpatient visits to the government hospitals is poor due to lack of sufficient care. As the decentralization of state authority varies widely between states, the large cities only have significant financial authority. The lack of authority of local bodies on public health care systems as well as government hospitals resulted in failure of prevention of number of diseases and the people are ignorant even about prevailing diseases. According to World Bank reports in 1995, 1996, 1997b, 2000c, the high levels of poverty also exacerbated the poor health conditions as poor governance resulted in weak public health care infrastructure. Hence, public health care inefficiency as well as poverty and ignorance contributed to problems in India (Peters, David H. (Author), 2002). 1 The important section of population in India that bears the burden of disease is poor and marginalized income people as well as the rural people, as they are not able to bear the cost of health care in private sector. Hence, they are forced to go to public health care systems that are not efficient in curing them and thus bore the burden of the disease. According Agnihotram V. et al (2004), the disease burden of rural Indian women, suffering with asthma and bronchitis that may lead to prematurity and heart attacks. In addition to that the lack of health infrastructure in Indian rural areas is resulting in maternal deaths concentrated in the age group of 20-24 years. It has been observed that the bleeding is main cause for maternal deaths and they occur more in rural areas and in the case of poor people. The diseases that exert significant burden on rural and poor people are tuberculosis, malaria and burns are important causes of death in reproductive ages. However, the rate of suici de and burn as well as anemia diminishes with age and hence it can be concluded more accurately that the burden of disease is more in case of young poor rural people mostly women in the above mentioned contexts. The nationwide health plans in India are not sufficient to prevent the deaths and burden of the disease to maximum extent (V Agnihotram, 2004). 2 Epidemiological Causes for Diseases Among Rural Poor and Women In addition to that the nation's public health care is not sufficient to avoid the epidemiological causes for diseases in India. The disease causing burden can be attributed to highest exposures of household roles that affect the children and women as well. As the public health care system is not enough equipped to avoid the above-mentioned exposure, the demographical conditions also play a role in increasing the burden of TB, asthma and blindness thus decreasing the