Bridging the Health Inequality and Strengthening Public Health System Through Public Private Partnership

Abstract

India stands on 67<sup>th</sup> position out of 133 (approx) developing countries with regard to the number of doctors, while stands on 75<sup>th</sup> position with respect to number of nurses. Out of total healthcare spending in India, the government owned health facilities accounts for only 20% in comparison to 80% of private sector. Over 72.2% of Indian population lives in rural areas under poor and unsatisfactory environmental conditions, with high levels of openness to diseases and ill health. A significant proportion of poor in India are destitute due to lack of affordability to the services of private hospitals, characterized by highly qualified doctors and costly equipments, whereas public hospitals are noticeable by insufficient number of facilities, lack of personnel, medicines along with long queues which further highlights economical disparity problems of Indian people to thrash about the health related problems. As per the NFHS 2 data, only 43% of the urban poor children are fully immunized by the completion of one year of age. The percentage of severely underweight children among the urban poor is 23.0 which is twice the urban average (11.6%) and five times (4.5%) that of urban high income group. The vast majority of the country suffers from a poor standard of healthcare infrastructure which has not kept up with the growing economy. The only hope for the improvement in condition of the health care system of developing countries can be the mixture of public –private through Public Private Partnership. This paper aims to examine the current status of health infrastructure in developing countries like India, about the challenges lying in front of Government in developing health care system, identifying critical gap and requirements in Health services besides the comparison with other developing economies. It also seeks to examine the socio-economic environment of developing country, attracted towards private sector participation in health care development and review of potential benefits and risk involved, to ensure success and sustainability of Public Private Partnership.