India: Health Care Patterns and Planning

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Vast majority of people in the third world suffer from high mortality and morbidity. In contrast, the affluent enjoy a health status comparable to that of most people in the developed countries. The distribution of health services are also skewed-resources are directed at sophisticated facilities in towns while the rural majority remains practically unserved. Thus, maldistribution of health care resources is one of the most serious problems facing all developing countries especially those with a colonial past. A geographical study of health care focuses on aspects concerning the facilities and practitioner location, inequality in accessibility, distance decay in utilization frequency, travel time and costs. These aspects are analysed within the framework of the physical and socio-economic framework of the physical and socio-economic cultural and political conditions of a given situation. This book has grown out of numerous studies on varied topics; the spatial organization of health care facilities, inequalities, accessibility, location allocation models, knowledge about health care systems in different cultures and illness and health beliefs in different regions in India. The book discusses spatial pattern of inequalities in health care facilities in India in general and in various states in particular, indigenous system of medicine i.e., Unani, and homeopathy, and planning and accessibility models.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rais Akhtar

Rais Akhtar is Professor, Deptt. of Geography and regional development, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, J&K. he was a Full Member of the International Geographical Union Commission on Health, Environment and Development (1988-2000), and Chair of the National Association of Geographers, India, Commission on Medical Geography (1992-96). He has been awarded a number of international fellowships, including Leverhulme, Henry Chapman, Commonwealth Secretariat, Belgium and French government fellowships and Visiting Fellowship, IDS, Brighton. He visited University of Paris-10, France, and the University of Akron, USA as visiting Professor. He has delivered lectures in a number of universities both in geography departments and medicinal institutes in Hong Kong, Japan, USA, U.K, France, Belgium and Italy. He has to his credit a number of research papers published in national and international journals. He is the author/editor of ten books â€“ two of them were published in London and New York. During 1988-90, he was a Member of the Working Group on Health and Family Welfare of the Planning Commission, New Delhi. He was also nominated as Lead Author on the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (1999-2001). Prof. Akhtar was on the board of Advisory Editors of the international journal Social Science & Medicine during 1996-2002. He has recently been awarded a fellowship under Indo-French Social Scientist Exchange Programme-2004 for a research visit to universities in Paris.