Quality health care must for India: FICCI experts

Emphasising that India needs to transform its healthcare sector as it loses huge amount of money due to premature deaths and preventable illnesses every year, experts say that providing access to quality healthcare for 1.25 crore people was a huge challenge that the country must meet.

"We house 16 per cent of world's population and 21 per cent of world's disease burden equalling loss of 6 per cent of India's GDP due to premature deaths and preventable illnesses. It is estimated that the increasing Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) burden will cost India $4.58 trillion due to loss of productivity," said Nandakumar Jairam, chairman, Ficci Health Services Committee, according to a release.

At the same time, he said, India's total health spend is only 4.7 per cent of GDP and out of pocket expenditure (OOP) is 62 per cent of the total health spend.

"This is very high when compared to other countries such as Brazil (25 per cent), China (32 per cent, South Africa (6 per cent), the US (11 per cent) and the UK (9 per cent)," he added.

Vishal Bali, co-chairman, Ficci Health Services Committee and chairman, Medwell Ventures, said that unprecedented demand due to demographic changes and shifting disease patterns, coupled with rising costs and the proliferation of technology, has led to demand for efficiency, transparency in care delivery.