Affordability of health care, a serious problem: Hamid Ansari

NEW DELHI: Affordability of health care is a serious problem for the vast majority of population with the healthcare workforce being inadequate and underutilised, Vice President Hamid Ansari said today.

"Healthcare infrastructure gaps remain substantial, healthcare workforce remains inadequate and underutilised. Regulatory standards for public and private hospitals are not adequately defined and, in any case, are ineffectively enforced.

"An effective regulatory system is required to manage the large and diverse set of healthcare service providers," said Ansari while addressing the '5th Foundation Day and 2nd Convocation of the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS)' here.

The lack of extensive and adequately funded public health services pushes large numbers of people to incur heavy out of pocket expenditures on services purchased from the private sector, he said adding that the situation is further aggravated by the inequity in healthcare delivery across states and demographic segments.

"Rural areas are especially poorly served. Around 70 per cent of our population lives in rural areas but only two per cent qualified doctors are available in these areas," he stressed.

The problems, he said, are likely to worsen in future with the healthcare costs expected to rise with rising life expectancy and a larger proportion of our population becoming vulnerable to chronic non-communicable diseases which typically require expensive treatment.