Health policy to moot 5 per cent spending from Gross State Domestic Product

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The people's health policy which is likely to come out next month will recommend the government to spend 5 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) or the state's income on health care. At the moment, the expenditure on the health care is less than 1.5 per cent of the SDP which may not be enough to implement the mega schemes planned by government.

The government has prepared a five year road map for turning around the health sector by introducing super specialty facilities in district hospitals, raising them to the standard of medical colleges, improving basic infrastructure facilities in existing medical colleges, creating staff and infrastructure in new colleges and specialist facilities in community and primary health centres. The government had earlier decided to spend Rs 250 crore from the 12,000-crore stimulus package on health sector this year.

The idea behind raising the spending from SDP to 5 per cent, is to bring down per capita out of pocket spending on health care. According to National Health Profile 2015-16, Kerala spends maximum per capita out of pocket amount on medical needs at Rs 244 per month in rural areas and Rs 275 in urban areas. The national average is Rs 95.18 for rural areas and Rs 145.71 for urban centres, respectively. Experts say in 2014 Rs 25,000 crore was spent on health care sector of which the government share was just Rs 6000 crore.

They say a sudden increase from 1.5 per cent to 5 per cent of SDP sounds idealistic but if the government showed political will it could gradually increase the spending over a period of five years. According to rough estimates, 30 per cent of out of pocket expenditure is on medicines. This can be brought down significantly if the government implemented free generic medicines and subsidised medicines schemes effectively.