StatsGuru: Key numbers to consider while framing health care policy

India has 20% of the world's disease burden, it has far less than its share of doctors, nurses and technicians

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India is designing a health care policy which is, judging by statistics, overdue. As Table 1 shows, while India has 20 per cent of the world's disease burden, it has far less than its share of doctors, nurses and technicians. Indeed, in terms of hospital beds per 10,000 people - shown in Table 2 - India is far, far behind other countries.

This is because of abysmally low spending. As Table 3 shows, India's public spending on health care, as a percentage of GDP, is lower even than in Haiti. Note that this does not mean the spending on health care in general is very low; as Table 4 shows, four per cent of GDP goes on health spending.

What this means is that private health care has grown at a fast clip of 15 per cent a year, as shown in Table 5. Most of that money is spent, according to Table 6, on hospitals, and practically nothing on insurance. The difference between India and the rest of the world in health spending - here it is a private, out-of-pocket expense - is visible in Table 7.