Securing Health for all Dimensions and Challenges

Although health infrastructure has grown impressively in India after independence, there is widespread malnutrition and prevalence of ill health in the country.  While households incur bulk of the health expenditure, government expenditure is limited to only about one-fourth of the total expenditure.  India is among those few countries, which spend the least on health.  No wonder, expenditure on health care has emerged in recent years as the second most important source of rural indebtedness in the country.  The process of liberalization and concomitant policy reforms initiated during the nineties have added a new dimension to the efforts at bringing health care to the vast populace, particularly the vulnerable groups.  The liberalization of health sector and emphasis on insurance, increasing pace of privatization of health services, increase in drug prices, etc. are new challenges that have emerged in recent years.  In this context, health security, calling for adequate, prompt, timely and equitable access to health care facilities, becomes a major challenge in a poor country like India.  In addition to an introduction and overview, this volume contains 23 papers that discuss comprehensively the issues of health security in the country.  Apart from providing a broad overview of the current health scenario in terms of outreach and coverage of health services at national and state levels, the papers in the volume address one of the critical policy issues confronting the nation such as health security for the vulnerable groups, health governance, and so on.  The volume contributes significantly to the ongoing discourse on health security putting people center-stage.  Accordingly, it will be useful not only for analysis but also for policy building and advocacy.