Abstract
Rural Health is one of vital elements of rural life. India being a nation of villages requires an intensive approach towards rural health. Nearly 75 per cent of health infrastructure and other health resources are concentrated in urban areas. Even if several government programmes for growth of rural healthcare have been initiated, the procedural delay in implementation leads to its ineffectiveness. Rural areas have been infected with various contagious diseases like diarrhea, amoebiasis, typhoid, infectious hepatitis, worm infestations, measles, malaria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, respiratory infections, pneumonia and reproductive tract infections. The insanitary conditions of households aggravate expansion of these diseases which is further promoted by apathy of people and government. Although unit level institution under rural healthcare takes care of sanitation through its outreach services yet, there is a long milestone to upgrade our health scenario. Rural Health Care services in India are mainly based on Primary health care, which envisages attainment of healthy status for all. The Primary Health Centre (PHC) has been stated to be prime location for diagnosis and first referral of these patients. The coordination between primary and tertiary level institutions needs to be strengthened for overcoming present challenges. Methodology: This article is a review paper based on analysis of data collected through secondary sources like books, journal articles, government records, NGO reports. The current paper seeks to pinpoint key challenges of rural health system and possible strategies taken by the state for overcoming them.
Highlights
India is having limelight at global front in terms of its exploding population but its health scenario
Due to this kind of notion, the rural areas are under the influence of various superstitions which leads to blockade in the advancement of modern pathology there
Penetration of basic infrastructure availability is very low in all the BIMAROU states (India Development Report, 2012/13). 4 percent of Primary Health Centre (PHC) were functioning without electricity, and 7 percent were without regular water supply as of March’ 2013 (NRHM, Budget Briefs, 2014-15)
Summary
India is having limelight at global front in terms of its exploding population but its health scenario . The public health expenditure of other developing countries has been pegged at 90.6 percent for Bhutan, 83.5 percent for Maldives, 73.4 percent for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 59.5 percent for Timor-Leste, 57.1 percent for Thailand, 48.9 percent for Srilanka, 44.2 percent for Bangladesh, 29.7 percent for Nepal, 25.1 percent for Indonesia during the same period(Bhat, Ramesh and Nishant Jain, 2004). This scenario is intensified by this fact that Out of Pocket (OOP) expenditure as percentage of total health expenditure in India is higher than that of several Asian, North and South American countries (Basu, Sambit and Saurabh Ghosh, n.d).
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