There are various causes for the poor health in rural India. In urban areas, there are a lot of physicians available and there are many people who attend these clinics. On the other hand, the people in the villages do not have adequate health care. The reasons for the poor health care in rural areas of India are as follows:
Improper sanitation:
This is a major cause of widespread water borne diseases
Due to inadequate recycling of waste water and inappropriate purification, rural people find no choice except to drink below par water due to which water borne disease like jaundice, typhoid, and cholera are most prevalent in our country.
Understaffed Health Care Centers:
As per record, around 40% Centers are understaffed. This leads to a delay in emergency treatment and many times death of the patient. This is a major disparity leading to the decreased treatment availability to the thousands of people in rural areas.
Underdeveloped healthcare infrastructure-
In comparison to world average of 4 hospital beds per 1000 individuals, India has a shocking 1 hospital bed per 1000 persons. Government medical colleges are the main source of treatment for rural and poor people due to its low cost .Lack of proper medical instruments and other essential facilities in these hospitals leads to poor health status of majority of patients who come to these hospitals regularly for their health care needs. It is awful to hear that every year 2 million people fall into below poverty line due to debt only because of trying to get treatment in high cost private hospitals. This again is because of the lack of any government sponsored medical insurance.
It's also a wonder that in a country of 115 crore population, we have only one hospital that is the nation's pride, AIIMS hospital
Lack of promotion of proper nutrition
Malnutrition diseases like kwashiorkor and marasmus are still being seen in large numbers in underdeveloped states of the nation because of poor transmission and storage of goods. Corruption is an evergreen cause for all these. There is corruption at every level and the needs of the people are not met and instead, the few people who are corrupt fill their own pockets.
Improper budget allotted to healthcare sector
Our government has not kept up health care industry with the pace of the booming economy. Government has neglected health status of citizens and spent only 1$ billion in the year 2008-2009. Investment on per capita basis is also very low as compare to other equally developed nations in Asia. India invests less than a $ per capita on health care against 6000$ on every American citizen by the United States of America.
Lack of awareness and information
Janarogya yojna is a Government campaign, giving free health insurance to poor people. It has hardly reached the desired population due to lack of communication and the prevalence of corruption. This is also the case in many of the other government programs and all these have made the rural people to have poor health care facility.
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