India’s healthcare structure is best summed as inadequate and it eludes poorest of its citizen, says human rights activist and paediatrician Dr. Binayak Sen in an article in the Lancet journal, now jailed on the charge of sedition.

“In India, we have gross inequity in health-care delivery, Sen wrote in the medical journal titled ‘Securing the right to health for all in India’.

“There is widespread displacement and disenfranchisement of citizens and, in large parts of the resource-rich hinterland of the country, loss of livelihood and loss of access to common property resources vitiates the right to health,” he further wrote.

Sen articulated much of the malaise in Indian helathcare saying that the public health system is not even sufficient to handle increased allocation to the sector. “The stunted public health system is hardly geared up to absorb this increased allocation; already state governments are returning allocated money because of the inability to absorb increased allocations.”

The economic reforms have done nothing to better the conditions of its citizens, he says. “The yearly per head consumption of food grains in the country has drastically deteriorated. The latest National Family Health Survey (2005-06) provided grim evidence of very slow improvement in infant mortality, persistently low rates of child immunisation, and shocking rates of malnutrition.”

He also mentioned that state itself stands before the people as the guarantor of widespread sequestration of resources. “There is widespread displacement and disenfranchisement of citizens and, in large parts of the resource-rich hinterland of the country, loss of livelihood and loss of access to common property resources vitiates the right to health.”

Even with such dismal performance in the health sector, Sen sees some hope, “resources for hope do exist, even if not in the putative bona fides of state action.”

Read Sen’s article in Lancet. 

The editorial of the magazine also took note of Dr. Sen recent conviction which it said mockery of justice.

Link of series of articles on India’s health sector in the Lancet magazine.

Read - Gender equity and universal health coverage in India.

Read - India: access to affordable drugs and the right to health.

Read - Good governance in health care: the Karnataka experience.

Read - Research to achieve health care for all in India.

Read - Universal health care in India: missing core determinants.

Read - Towards a truly universal Indian health system.

Read - Indian health: the path from crisis to progress.

Read - Universal health care in India: the time is right.