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Public Health in India: How Far are we from Universal Health Coverage?

Document Cited in Related
Published date01 December 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00195561241277252
AuthorRumki Basu
Date01 December 2024
Public Health in India:
How Far are we from
Universal Health
Coverage?
Rumki Basu1
Introduction
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) denition of good health encompasses
not only the absence of disease but also the eervescence of well-being. According
to a WHO and World Bank Report (World Health Organization; & International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, 2017), more than
50% of the world’s population, that is, more than 8 billion people, do not have
access to essential health services. Besides, an estimated world’s 800 million poor
(which include 90 million Indians) spend at least 10% of their household budgets
on healthcare for themselves or their families. With the adoption of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 (United Nations Development Programme,
2015), the UN member states unanimously agreed to make aordable healthcare
one of the core ‘development goals’ with clear deadlines to assess progress in
implementation outputs and resultant health outcomes.
The demand for aordable healthcare snowballed globally through civil
society activism from the early years of the 21st century, and dierent govern-
ments tried to reach a domestic consensus over inclusion of target 3.8 of the
UN SDG’s call on all countries to ‘achieve universal health coverage’ through
nancial risk protection, and access to safe, eective and quality and aordable
health services which includes essential medicines and vaccines for all by 2030.
The Public Healthcare Scenario in India
The Constitution of India does not guarantee a fundamental right to health to its
citizens. Public health nds a mention in the Directive Principles of State Policy
and is assigned to the state list for legislative and executive action. This has led to
Note
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
70(4) 920–925, 2024
© 2024 IIPA
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/00195561241277252
journals.sagepub.com/home/ipa
1 Centre for Public Policy and Governance, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India
Corresponding author:
Rumki Basu, Centre for Public Policy and Governance, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi
110070, India.
E-mail: mailtorumkibasu@gmail.com

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