41pc rural people borrowed to finance healthcare expenses:Govt

Around 41 per cent of rural population and 23 per cent of urban masses relied on borrowings for financing expenditure on hospitalisation, the government today said.
"As per the NSSO 60th round (2004) report on Morbidity, Healthcare and Condition of the Aged, about 41 per cent of rural population and 23 per cent of urban population relied on borrowings for financing the expenditure on hospitalisation," Health Minister J P Nadda informed Rajya Sabha.
He said that as per one analysis of NSSO 2004 data, around 63.22 million people were impoverished due to healthcare expenditure in 2004.
Nadda said that under the National Health Mission (NHM) which encompasses the National Rural Health Mission and the National Urban Health Mission, support is provided to states to strengthen their healthcare delivery system to provide equitable, accessible, affordable and quality healthcare with focus on addressing health needs of the poor and vulnarable groups.

He said that under this support, many services are expected to be provided free of cost to all citizens who access these services at public health facilities and the services include maternal health, universal immunisation programme providing seven vaccine preventable diseases, pulse polio programme, family planning, communicable diseases amongst others.
Replying to another question, Nadda said that the NSSO also conducts nationwide household consumer expenditure surveys at regular interval which provide information on consumption of food in terms of calories and protiens for urban and rural areas of the country.
"According to the report Nutritional Intake in India, 2011-12 published in October 2014 by NSSO, average dietary energy intake per day per capita was 2,233 Kilocalorie in rural India and 2,206 Kcal for urban India," Nadda said.

He said that the protien intake (gm) per day per capita (2011-12) in rural areas is 60.7 per cent while in urban areas is 60.3 per cent.