India provides the worst end-of-life heath care

July 29th, 2010 posted by admin
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India provides the worst end-of-life heath care

While India is a country noted for its poor quality of life in comparison to western countries, it also scores very poorly on the quality of care available for patients suffering from terminal illnesses. New figures from the Economic Intelligence Unit, which measures the quality of ‘end-of-life care’ in 40 countries, ranked India at the bottom, below numerous developing nations. Countries such as Uganda, one of the most violent, corrupt countries in the world, scored higher than India on this measure, whilst the United Kingdom was ranked number one in the international survey. Accessing good quality health care in a country like India is hard, mainly due to the fact that there simply aren’t enough doctors or hospitals to accommodate the population of 1.13 billion.

The survey reveals a number of surprising findings. France, which has generally been ranked as providing one of the world’s most efficient and cost-effective health care systems, was ranked 12th place - below the United States, Canada and Australia. Other developed countries such as Italy and Denmark fared worse, achieving number 22 and number 24 respectively. Sweden, which is known for having one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, only managed the number 16 position, ranking it below countries such as Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance announced that only eight percent of over 100 million patients in the world actually receive palliative long term care. These shockingly low figures generally result from high budget costs, cultural issues, ineffective policies and limited access to medical care, all of which are problems even in developed countries. Many otherwise superb health care systems fail when it comes to end-of-life care because the bulk of these patients are the elderly – an age group which is growing year by year as life expectancy increases. End-of-life care will continue to face tougher demand as the ageing population phenomenon continues.