Story in numbers: Uttar Pradesh lags in key metrics

The per capita public expenditure on health is lowest in the state

Last Updated : Feb 20 2017 | 12:11 AM IST

With 200 million people, Uttar Pradesh (UP) has about the same population as Brazil; an economy the size of Qatar — which has 2.4 million people, the same as the UP town of Bijnore; per capita gross domestic product (GDP) comparable to Kenya’s; and an infant mortality rate that rivals the Gambia, a poverty-ridden, peanut-growing West African nation.

With 75 districts, and 97,607 villages, UP is larger, by population, than all but five countries. It holds the key to political dominion over India, but, in terms of health and nutritional outcomes, infrastructure and coverage indicators, it is widely considered a laggard, improving slowly, with wide disparities within.

The per capita public expenditure on health (by both the Centre and states) is the lowest in UP among the five states, with 169 million voters going to polls between February 4 and March 8, according to an analysis by the Observer Research Foundation.

Goa, a state with less than one per cent of UP’s population, spends more than five times more, per capita, on its citizens’ health. UP’s average spending is 70 per cent of the Indian average.

This low spending leads to fewer doctors, nurses and paramedics in health care institutions, leaves one in two children without full immunisation, 14 per cent of the state’s households are faced with “catastrophic” health expenditure, higher than 25 per cent of total household spending, and a health insurance coverage of 4.2 per cent, compared with the Indian average of 15.2 per cent.

Source: IndiaSpend