New Delhi: WHO reveals major information about Indian women's health. The report says that women in India live a healthy life for an average of 60 years. After that, they become vulnerable to varied diseases and injuries. It is the lowest in 11 countries in Southeast Asia.
In the case of men, Timor-Leste and Myanmar are the only two countries that are much worse in terms of healthy life expectancy.
One factor, that for obvious reason contributes to this is the fact that the mortality rate of children under 5 years is the highest in these same countries, Timor-Leste and Myanmar being again even worse off than India.
These serious points emerge from the data in the recently released WHO report on the region's progress in achieving universal health coverage and health-related sustainable development goals.
Best performing countries
The best-performing countries in the region are Sri Lanka, Thailand and Maldives. In these countries, the total government spending on health expenditure is the highest in the region. On the contrary, India (3.4%), Bangladesh (3%) and Myanmar (3.5%) have the lowest share of spending on health in total government spending.
As a result, in these three countries, out-of-pocket spending, i.e. people spending from their savings constitutes between 63% in India and 76% in Myanmar compared to just 11% in Thailand.
Given this situation, it is no surprise that Bangladesh and India also have the highest proportion of their population, 7% and 4.2%, respectively, being pushed into poverty due to huge spending on health care. Nearly a quarter of the population in Bangladesh and more than 17% in India are expected to face disastrous heavy expenses due to health care.