GUWAHATI: States in the Northeast need to spend more on healthcare besides having in place adequate healthcare professionals, particularly in the rural areas, to take care of the people’s health needs besides implementation of government schemes, experts in the healthcare sector, say.
Addressing mediapersons here on Sunday, the director of the New Delhi-based International Institute of Health Management Research, Dr Sanjiv Kumar said the Northeast needed to spend more on healthcare besides upgrading its medical centres into health and wellness centres.
“The number of health personnel in primary and secondary healthcare system in the Northeastern states should be in accordance with the National Health Mission guidelines and an enhanced health budget should be twice the existing budget over the next five years,” Dr Kumar said.
According to National Health Profile-2018, the per capita public health expenditure in Assam is the lowest at Rs 1546 among the northeastern states, followed by Manipur (Rs 2061), Tripura (Rs 2183), Meghalaya (Rs 2223), Nagaland (Rs 2450), Sikkim (Rs 5126), Arunachal Pradesh (Rs 5177), and Mizoram (Rs 5862).
“Substantial investment of additional resources, be it money and manpower, is needed to scale up the health services with an aim to improve maternal and child healthcare. Health managers have to be appointed while healthcare personnel have to be trained in accordance with the current requirements in the sector,” he said.
The health scenario in the northeastern states has changed in recent years. Non-communicable diseases such as blood pressure, diabetes and cancers have emerged as major killers, contributing 58 percent of total deaths. Another 9.1 percent die due to injuries and accidents. Maternal child health and infectious diseases account for the remaining 32.1 percent.
“Therefore, while significant strides have been taken in healthcare of late by the governments, many interventions still have to be made in the future to improve health service delivery. Healthcare centres have to be upgraded. Assam for instance has 4621 centres, a majority of which have to be upgraded into health and wellness centres,” he added.
The recently released fourth National Family Health Survey shows that while northeastern states have succeeded in improving its health indicators, the current situation leaves a lot more room for improvement.
For instance, while the coverage of full antenatal care for pregnant women is only 2.4 per cent in Nagaland, 3.6 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh, 7.6 per cent in Tripura, 23.5 per cent in Meghalaya, 32 per cent in Assam, 33.9 per cent in Manipur, 38.5 per cent in Mizoram and 39 per cent in Sikkim.