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Sanitation, Health and Hygiene in India

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  Water is a basic necessity, and an important resource for sustaining life. The decline in water quality endangers the health of humans as well as the ecosystem. Clean drinking water, hygiene, and sanitation play an important part in maintaining health. Contaminated water causes many water-born infections like diarrhoea, and also serves as a carrier for vectors such as mosquitoes spreading epidemics. Open defecation means no sanitation. It fouls the environment, and spreads diseases. According to WHO-UNICEF report (2010), India has the highest rate of open defecation. Access to safe drinking water and good sanitation are vital for family well-being. It results in control of c enteric diseases, and boosts child health problems . A healthy child has better learning and retaining ability. Girls avoid going to school where there are no proper sanitation measures. Sanitation makes a positive contribution in family literacy. According to a UNICEF study, for every 10 per cent increas...
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The Mess in Indian HealthCare

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India's hospitals are currently short of doctors, medical equipment and ICU beds, with authorities struggling to cope with an unprecedented health crisis. A surge in COVID-19 cases has overwhelmed the health system.   Hospitals in India have become overwhelmed due to an unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases. Authorities in the capital in Delhi have instructed 33 private hospitals to reserve 80% of their intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients amid a shortage of facilities in government-run medical institutes. At the beginning of August, Delhi had successfully contained the pandemic spread, with the cases dropping to less than 1,000 per day. But there has been a resurgence of the virus across the country, and the capital city had not been spared. The overall number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi has now surpassed 230,000. In the last eight days, more than 4,000 new cases have been recorded daily. "There seems to be no end to this crisis. We are overwhelmed with risi...
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Challenges to Healthcare in India

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  The Indian healthcare scenario presents a spectrum of contrasting landscapes. At one end of the spectrum are the glitzy steel and glass structures delivering High Tech Medicare to the well-heeled, mostly urban Indian. At the other end are the ramshackle outposts in the remote reaches of the “other India” trying desperately to live up to their identity as health subcenter, waiting to be transformed to shrines of health and wellness, a story which we will wait to see unfold. With the rapid pace of change currently being witnessed, this spectrum is likely to widen further, presenting even more complexity in the future. While there are many challenges, I present five “A's” for our consideration: 1.Awareness or the lack of it: How aware is the Indian population about important issues regarding their own health? Studies on awareness are many and diverse, but lacunae in awareness appear to cut across the lifespan in our country.  Why is the level of health awareness low in the I...
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COVID-19 SCENARIO IN INDIA

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                                    Covid-19 outbreak has led to a major global crisis, one of the major issues we are facing is healthcare crises. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of healthcare systems even in developed countries, not to mention that situation in India is grim even from a  real estate  perspective, the same ratio for India is merely 0.5 bed per 1000 population, even behind countries like Chile and Colombia. Despite there being ample emphasis on personal hygiene and no lack of medical as well as scientific evidence to highlight its importance, hygiene practices failed to make a major impact in India.     ISSUES FACED BY HOSPITALS IN INDIA   At the time of independence, the private health sector provided only 5-10% of total patient care in India. Today  private sector  consists of 58% of the hospitals in the country. Medica...
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