India's Health

[Guest guest]

And aren't we always hearing about polio in India - there is not a

mention of it in 1995 data from Library of Congress India page.

I'm confused - or am I?

Section 1 of 1

India

Life Expectancy and Mortality

The average Indian male born in the 1990s can expect to live 58.5

years; women can expect to live only slightly longer (59.6

years), according to 1995 estimates. Life expectancy has risen

dramatically throughout the century from a scant twenty years in

the 1911-20 period. Although men enjoyed a slightly longer life

expectancy throughout the first part of the twentieth century, by

1990 women had slightly surpassed men. The death rate declined from

48.6 per 1,000 in the 1910-20 period to fifteen per

1,000 in the 1970s, and improved thereafter, reaching ten per 1,000

by 1990, a rate that held steady through the mid-1990s.

India's high infant mortality rate was estimated to exceed 76 per

1,000 live births in 1995 (see table 7, Appendix). Thirty

percent of infants had low birth weights, and the death rate for

children aged one to four years was around ten per 1,000 of the

population.

According to a 1989 National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau report, less

than 15 percent of the population was adequately

nourished, although 96 percent received an adequate number of

calories per day. In 1986 daily average intake was 2,238

calories as compared with 2,630 calories in China. According to UN

findings, caloric intake per day in India had fallen slightly

to 2,229 in 1989, lending credence to the concerns of some experts

who claimed that annual nutritional standards statistics

cannot be relied on to show whether poverty is actually being

reduced. Instead, such studies may actually pick up short-term

amelioration of poverty as the result of a period of good crops

rather than a long-term trend.

Official Indian estimates of the poverty level are based on a

person's income and corresponding access to minimum nutritional

needs (see Growth since 1980, ch. 6). There were 332 million people

at or below the poverty level in FY 1991, most of whom

lived in rural areas.

Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases

A number of endemic communicable diseases present a serious public

health hazard in India. Over the years, the government

has set up a variety of national programs aimed at controlling or

eradicating these diseases, including the National Malaria

Eradication Programme and the National Filaria Control Programme.

Other initiatives seek to limit the incidence of respiratory

infections, cholera, diarrheal diseases, trachoma, goiter, and

sexually transmitted diseases.

Smallpox, formerly a significant source of mortality, was eradicated

as part of the worldwide effort to eliminate that disease.

India was declared smallpox-free in 1975. Malaria remains a serious

health hazard; although the incidence of the disease

declined sharply in the postindependence period, India remains one of

the most heavily malarial countries in the world. Only the

Himalaya region above 1,500 meters is spared. In 1965 government

sources registered only 150,000 cases, a notable drop

from the 75 million cases in the early postindependence years. This

success was short-lived, however, as the malarial parasites

became increasingly resistant to the insecticides and drugs used to

combat the disease. By the mid-1970s, there were nearly

6.5 million cases on record. The situation again improved because of

more conscientious efforts; by 1982 the number of cases

had fallen by roughly two-thirds. This downward trend continued, and

in 1987 slightly fewer than 1.7 million cases of malaria

were reported.

In the early 1990s, about 389 million people were at risk of

infection from filaria parasites; 19 million showed symptoms of

filariasis, and 25 million were deemed to be hosts to the parasites.

Efforts at control, under the National Filaria Control

Programme, which was established in 1955, have focused on eliminating

the filaria larvae in urban locales, and by the early

1990s there were more than 200 filaria control units in operation.

Leprosy, a major public health and social problem, is endemic, with

all the states and union territories reporting cases.

However, the prevalence of the disease varies. About 3 million

leprosy cases are estimated to exist nationally, of which 15 to

20 percent are infectious. The National Leprosy Control Programme was

started in 1955, but it only received high priority after

1980. In FY 1982, it was redesignated as the National Leprosy

Eradication Programme. Its goal was to achieve eradication of

the disease by 2000. To that end, 758 leprosy control units, 900

urban leprosy centers, 291 temporary hospitalization wards,

285 district leprosy units, and some 6,000 lower-level centers had

been established by March 1990. By March 1992, nearly

1.7 million patients were receiving regular multidrug treatment,

which is more effective than the standard single drug therapy

(Dapsone monotherapy).

India is subject to outbreaks of various diseases. Among them is

pneumonic plague, an episode of which spread quickly

throughout India in 1994 killing hundreds before being brought under

control. Tuberculosis, trachoma, and goiter are endemic.

In the early 1980s, there were an estimated 10 million cases of

tuberculosis, of which about 25 percent were infectious. During

1991 nearly 1.6 million new tuberculosis cases were detected. The

functions of the Trachoma Control Programme, which

started in 1968, have been subsumed by the National Programme for the

Control of Blindness. Approximately 45 million

Indians are vision-impaired; roughly 12 million are blind. The

incidence of goiter is dominant throughout the sub-Himalayan

states from Jammu and Kashmir to the northeast. There are some 170

million people who are exposed to iodine deficiency

disorders. Starting in the late 1980s, the central government began a

salt iodinization program for all edible salt, and by 1991

record production--2.5 million tons--of iodized salt had been

achieved. There are as well anemias related to poor nutrition, a

variety of diseases caused by vitamin and mineral

deficiencies--beriberi, scurvy, osteomalacia, and rickets--and a high

incidence of parasitic infection.

Diarrheal diseases, the primary cause of early childhood mortality,

are linked to inadequate sewage disposal and lack of safe

drinking water. Roughly 50 percent of all illness is attributed to

poor sanitation; in rural areas, about 80 percent of all children

are infected by parasitic worms. Estimates in the early 1980s

suggested that although more than 80 percent of the urban

population had access to reasonably safe water, fewer than 5 percent

of rural dwellers did. Waterborne sewage systems were

woefully overburdened; only around 30 percent of urban populations

had adequate sewage disposal, but scarcely any

populations outside cities did. In 1990, according to United States

sources, only 3 percent of the rural population and 44

percent of the urban population had access to sanitation services, a

level relatively low by developing nation standards. There

were better findings for access to potable water: 69 percent in the

rural areas and 86 percent in urban areas, relatively high

percentages by developing nation standards. In the mid-1990s, about 1

million people die each year of diseases associated

with diarrhea.

India has an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million cases of cancer, with

500,000 new cases added each year. Annual deaths from

cancer total around 300,000. The most common malignancies are cancer

of the oral cavity (mostly relating to tobacco use and

pan chewing--about 35 percent of all cases), cervix, and breast.

Cardiovascular diseases are a major health problem; men and

women suffer from them in almost equal numbers (14 million versus 13

million in FY 1990).

Data as of September 1995