India : Private Health Services for the Poor
Despite India's great strides since independence, fertility, mortality, and morbidity remain unacceptably high. Although poverty and low levels of education are the root causes of poor health outcomes, poor stewardship over the health system b...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2005/05/6292962/india-private-health-services-poor http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13657 |
| Summary: | Despite India's great strides since
independence, fertility, mortality, and morbidity remain
unacceptably high. Although poverty and low levels of
education are the root causes of poor health outcomes, poor
stewardship over the health system bears some
responsibility. Although India's states exhibit a wide
variation in health outcomes, all but the best-performing
states need to focus on improving both sexual and
reproductive health care and child health care, and on
reducing communicable diseases for the poor. This paper
examines the public and private responses to this situation
detailing the reasons behind the failure of the public
sector and ways in which the private sector can be
encouraged to play a role in providing health care for the
poor in India. The paper concludes that there are three
promising areas for the private sector including; (i)
contracting out the primary health centers, (ii) social
franchising and (iii) demand-led financing. The study is
focused on what to do to improve health care for the poor,
while a series of separate background papers focus on how to
do it, and state specific issues in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar,
Karnataka, and Punjab. |
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