India: the Covid-19 pandemic has accentuated population poverty and inequalities
People line up to get vaccinated against Covid-19 during a special municipal vaccination campaign at a bus stop in Ahmedabad, India on Friday, September 17, 2021. AP - Ajit Solanki
Text by: Sébastien Farcis Follow
2 min
Health expenses are not reimbursed in India.
This situation is particularly serious in India, a country, apparently rich and robust, but which has not invested enough in its health system.
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From our correspondent in New Delhi,
The WHO reveals that 4.2% of India's population falls into poverty each year due to excessive health costs, or more than 50 million people per year.
This mainly happens because they do not have adequate health insurance.
The WHO calculates that Indians must therefore cover 2/3 of their medical expenses, four times more than the average for countries in Europe and Central Asia, for example.
India may therefore be among the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP, its welfare state is sorely lacking: only 3.4% of its public spending is devoted to health, which, in times of pandemic , is proving disastrous - and we unfortunately saw it last May, when the new Delta variant of Covid-19 hit the country.
Hospitals were totally overwhelmed and patients sometimes died on the streets.
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Indians got into debt to heal themselves
Shaikh Aziz Rahman is a freelance journalist in Calcutta - before the pandemic he was making a relatively good living, but he could not save much or take out private insurance.
When he fell seriously ill from Covid-19 last June, he wanted to go to a public hospital, where care is very cheap, but they were overwhelmed.
So he was in the private sector: “
I was in intensive care, which is very expensive, but it saved my life.
In all, I spent 3 weeks in the hospital, which cost around 7,000 euros.
We didn't have that much money, so my wife had to sell all of her jewelry and borrow more money.
Today, I lost 30 kg and cannot work, which worries me terribly, because we have no more money
”.
Glaring inequalities
India is one of the region's worst performers in this area.
Indeed, the country spends three times less money on its health expenses than Sri Lanka or Indonesia, for example.
And the life expectancy of Indians suffers: an Indian born today will live on average 71 years, less than in neighboring Bangladesh, poor and overpopulated.
This underinvestment in health helps to keep India in the circle of the most unequal countries in the world: the rich who can afford treatment in private hospitals are doing well, the others suffer and die at a younger age.
► Read also: Covid-19: ten million people vaccinated in one day in India
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Coronavirus
India
Health and medicine
Poverty