WHO calls for hiking health expenditure

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New Delhi, April 7: The world health report, 2005 - make every mother and child count, launched globally here on Thursday, says total public health expenditure for the 75 countries with the biggest problems needs to be scaled up from the current $97 billion per year. $9 billion a year should be added in the next 10 years, it adds. The report says over 50% of all child deaths occur in just six countries — India, Pakistan China, Congo, Ethiopia, and Nigeria.

It places India among “slow progressors” among the 51 countries in terms of improvements in mother and child health. India has the third highest maternal mortality rate at 407, below only to Timor-Leste (800) and Nepal (415) in the Southeast Asian region. Also, it has the second highest infant mortality rate in the region at 68 below only to Timor-Leste, it says.

WHO deputy regional director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said, “Maternal and child health is a problem in India. The social establishment is such that wives and mothers do not have adequate acccess to healthcare.”

She pointed out even in ‘progressive’ states like Punjab, with the highest per capita income, women’s access to healthcare was low. The WHO report saw a correlation between social inequity, maternal and child health. “Preference for a son and sex-ratio in India continues to be unfavourable to females...Discriminatory care of a girl child leads to malnutrition and impaired physical, mental and emotional growth...Approximately, 85% women want at least one son and 33% want more sons than daughters,” it says.

Maternal mortality rates (MMRs) exceed 400 per 100,000 live births in 10 out of 15 states in India. In Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, MMRs were as high as 700 or more, the report adds.