National Health Profile 2019

As of April 2018, a total of 16,279 habitations (defined as “a group of families living in proximity to each other, within a village”) across seven states were affected by the presence of excess arsenic in water. Moreover, 10,379 habitations across 16 states had excess fluoride in the water and had not been provided with safe drinking water, the report notes.

Of the various communicable diseases reported in India in 2018, the highest percentage of deaths were recorded due to pneumonia (30.65 per cent), acute respiratory infection (27.21 per cent) and acute diarrhoeal diseases (10.55 per cent). 

Through 2014 to 2018, there was a significant decrease in cases of malaria and deaths due to it in the country. In 2014, the number of malaria cases were reported to be 1,102,205, while in 2018, the number of cases were around 399,134. In 2018, the highest number of cases were recorded in Chhattisgarh (77,140), while the least cases were recorded in Sikkim (three).

Provisional data for 2018 recorded 11,382 cases of acute encephalitis syndrome and 637 deaths due to it across all the states and union territories of India. The highest number of cases that year were recorded in Uttar Pradesh (3,080 cases and 230 deaths).

As per the report, in 2017, a total of 508 cases of cholera and three deaths were recorded in the country. As per provisional data for 2018, the number increased to 651 cases and six deaths that year.

The number of viral hepatitis cases in India fell between 2017 (164,289 cases) and 2018 (143,974 cases) but the number of deaths due to the infection rose from 537 deaths to 584 deaths during the same period. In 2018, Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of cases (24,868 cases), followed by Punjab (16,909 cases) and Delhi (12,377 cases).

Citing data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the report notes that there were 144 cases of foeticide recorded in India in 2016, the highest of which were recorded in Uttar Pradesh – 52 cases. In the same year, infanticide cases recorded in the country numbered 93 with Uttar Pradesh accounting for the highest number of cases at 21 cases.

Public health expenditure in 2015-16 was about Rs. 140,054 crores, the report states. According to the budget estimates for 2017-18, the allocated amount for public expenditure on health rose to around Rs. 213,719 crores. This brought the per capita expenditure on health to roughly Rs. 1,657.

Based on data from 2014, the average medical as well as non-medical expenditure per cases due to hospitalisation amounted to around Rs. 16,956 in rural areas and Rs. 26,455 in urban areas.

As of December of 2018, there were a total of 1,154,686 doctors possessing recognised medical qualifications under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, and registered with State Medical Councils or the Medical Council of India.

As of January 1, 2018, there were 799,879 AYUSH practitioners registered in India. Of these 55.47 per cent were registered in Ayurveda, 36.69 per cent in Homeopathy, 6.39 per cent in Unani, 1.14 per cent in Siddha, and 0.31 per cent in Naturopathy.

The report cites data from the World Health Organization to note that in 2016, average public expenditure on health in high-income countries was 5.61 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). It was 3.97 per cent of the GDP among upper-middle-income countries, 2.43 per cent among lower-middle-income countries and 1.57 per cent of the GDP for low-income countries. The public expenditure on health in India was even lower at 1.17 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2016.

The report notes that as of March 31, 2018, there were 158,417 sub-centres, 25,743 primary health centres and 5,624 community health centres in India. Also, accounting for both rural and the urban areas, there were 25,778 government hospitals in the country with 713,986 beds.

Focus and Factoids by Anushka Mukherjee.

PARI Library's health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop a free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.