Narendra Modi, as Gujarat CM, and Andhra Pradesh's YS Rajasekhar Reddy are the only two chief ministers in recent times to have focused on public healthcare during their election campaign
In 2006, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Chief Minister of Gujarat had introduced the Chiranjeev Yojna that focused on providing skill healthcare to pregnant women in the state. Taking a cue from its success, in2009 the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy introduced the Rajiv Aarogyasri Community Health Insurance Scheme for poor families. While this scheme ensured that they won consecutive terms during the assembly elections, other chief ministerial candidates haven’t focused on healthcare during the current assembly elections, as suggests a report by IANS.
The report highlighted a 2015 Lancet paper that addressed how healthcare was important to a political and economic debate because “inadequate public healthcare and healthcare expenses push an additional 55 million people back into poverty in India every year.”
Currently, more than half of India’s rural population uses private healthcare, which is four times as costly as public healthcare, and can cost the poorest 20 per cent of Indians more than 15 times their average monthly expenditure.
The five states going into polls have indicated the good, the bad and the ugly of India’s public health scenario, according to the report. Goa, for example, still has 9.8 per cent of women (currently aged 20-24) who were married before they turned 18. Similarly, in Manipur the sex ratio has dropped from 1,024 to 962 between 2005 and 2015.
The Uttar Pradesh government's Sample Registration System (SRS) reports show that between 2011 and 2014, there was a decline in Uttar Pradesh's sex ratio at birth, from 875 to 869.
Uttarakhand has shown the slowest improvement in infant mortality rate (IMR) -- deaths per 1,000 live births -- although NFHS data for Uttar Pradesh are yet to be released. Still, as SRS data show, Uttar Pradesh's IMR has come down from 57 to 48 between 2011 and 2014, suggesting that NFHS data will show improvement between 2005 and 2015.
Malnourishment is a major issue that has affected all the states going to polls. According to data, the proportion of stunted children under the age of five are similar: 29 per cent in Manipur, 20 per cent in Goa, 26 per cent in Punjab and 34 per cent in Uttarakhand for the year 2015-16. The latest data for Uttar Pradesh are awaited.
Some states have obesity issues such as Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district. According to data provided by the National Family Health Survey, 36.5 per cent of men surveyed in 2015-16 proved to be obese or overweight, as were 41 per cent of all the women surveyed. In Uttarakhand districts such as Dehradun, Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar, one in every four women surveyed was obese or overweight.
With these factors in mind, maybe it’s time the chief ministerial candidates, take a cue from Modi and YSR Reddy and make health a part of their manifesto.
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