According to an April 2012 Espicom report, West Bengal’s 294 government hospitals and community health centres, mainly in urban areas, account for a total of 54,759 beds, equivalent to 0.6 per thousand population, similar to the national average of 0.5.
The Espicom report titled, Understanding India’s Regional Health Markets, also throws up an interesting fact: pharmacists seem to outnumber other healthcare staff like doctors, dental surgeons, nurses and midwives.
West Bengal had 58,872 registered doctors in 2010 at a rate of 0.6 per thousand population, slightly less than the national average of 0.7. Likewise the state has only around 0.02 dental surgeons per thousand population and 0.5 registered nurses and midwives per thousand population; significantly less than the national average rates.
There is however around one pharmacist per thousand population, which is approximately twice the national average. These facts are not at all surprising and follow the national trend.
In this issue’s Best of East special, we focus on the private healthcare sector, which has both national hospital chains as well as regional players vying for a share of the market, as well as making a mark by bringing to the city, and to the Eastern region, top class speciality care.
But the fact remains that West Bengal, as well as the other states in East India, (Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha) remain under-served in terms of healthcare facilities. A reader writes in to tell us about the southern part of Odisha where a “medical facility is a dream for many people” with patients having to go to Vishakapatnam for medical care.
We intend to cover the evolving healthcare scenario in the East once again this December and by that time we hope we can expand this review to include more healthcare success stories.
The Government of India meanwhile seems to have decided to follow a ‘pro-poor’ path, at least as far as medications are concerned. According to a Reuters report, the government will provide doctors in public health facilities free generic medicines and has allocated $5.4 billion towards this plan. Pharma industry observers note that generic medication from reputed generic manufacturers are fine, but the government should not implement this scheme unless it puts a strong quality control and supply chain mechanism in place. Concerns are being raised that smaller fly-by-night operators, who may not adhere to good manufacturing practices and quality control mechanisms, could infiltrate the supply chain and release medicines of questionable quality. There have reports of seizures of medicines with varying amounts of the active ingredients and worse, spurious ingredients as well. While the intent is good, one hopes that the content also follows through.
Viveka Roychowdhury
Editor
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