Regional Disparity in Health Infrastructure in Bulandshahr District: Block Level Analysis

Abstract

Health is the most basic human right and its availability to all people without distinction of race, religion, and political belief, economic or social condition should be the highest priority of the government. India, in spite of attaining a successive advancement on economic front still lags behind the global standard to provide better health well-being to its people. The main reason for this highly uneven health gains in the country is because of the regional disparity in availability and accessibility in health services and health infrastructure. Health infrastructure thus is the most important tool to access the health care environment and welfare mechanism of a country. It signifies the investment priority with regards to the creation of health care facilities. Health infrastructure is the foundation to plan, deliver, evaluate and bringing about improvements in public health. The availability and accessibility of public health care services is very much dependent upon the presence of basic infrastructural facilities. The present research paper conducts research on health infrastructure and level of disparity in different blocks of Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. The data is sourced from the District Statistical Handbook of Bulandshahr District 2020-21. Different health indicators are taken out and calculated with help of Z-Score technique to get the regional disparity on health infrastructural availability at block level in Bulandshahr District. The Arc-View Software is used to get the pattern of high, medium and low availability of health infrastructure in different blocks of the district. The result shows that the urban biasness is present in the district in terms of distribution of health infrastructural facilities. Bulandshahr block, Sikandrabad block, Khurja block and Dibai blocks have better health infrastructure in comparison to other blocks of the district. The newly created Agauta Block is the most backward block in terms of having health infrastructure. Various policy measures are suggested to reduce the regional disparity in health infrastructure and improve the overall health well-being of people.