MIDDLE SCHOOL FINALIST - Riya Pharsiyawar

Riya Pharsiyawar, Grade 8
Danbury, Connecticut

The Consequences of India’s Inadequate Healthcare

As of 2016, India ranks 145th out of 193 in healthcare worldwide. This pandemic has clearly emphasized the huge lack of available and quality healthcare for all Indians. Throughout India, more than 329,000 Indian families have lost a loved one. It also leaves us teens in the United States wondering how we can help our family and friends in India. The absence of public healthcare is the most prominent issue in India today because of the suffering of underprivileged Indians and its impact on the pandemic.

To begin, impoverished Indians are negatively impacted by insufficient healthcare. For instance, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana or the National Health Insurance Program, which was intended to benefit lower-income families, has shown to not have reduced spending for medical issues. In fact, only 37% of all Indians are insured. It is clear from this data that universal healthcare is not found in India, despite the constitution certifying the right to health for all. According to Sumit Mazumdar, a research fellow at the University of York, “India’s hospitals are mostly concentrated in cities, and primary healthcare is weak in both urban and rural areas. The lack of critical healthcare infrastructure in government health facilities in most parts of the country means it is ill-prepared to meet routine demand, let alone crises.” This critical disparity has worsened the pandemic as well. India’s underfunded healthcare system means that those who suffered from COVID-19 were met with understaffed government facilities. This is true even when there isn’t a pandemic and government-funded medical facilities only make up for 10% of Indian hospitals. It is evident that the healthcare in India is lacking and has led to the coronavirus spreading like wildfire throughout the country.

This leads to our next question; “How can we, as young adults in the United States, contribute to the effort to improve Indian healthcare?” There is no one way to go about this, but an effective method is to donate to the cause and raise awareness. One non-governmental organization that specifically targets this disparity between rural and urban medical care is the Rural Health Care Foundation. This organization “has been providing high quality and affordable primary medical care to low-income and underprivileged communities of West Bengal” (RHCF website). RHCF aids rural families by supplying them with low-cost consultations and free medications for one week. This reduces the burden on families that otherwise cannot afford healthcare and we can contribute to this by donating to RHCF. We can raise even more money by organizing fundraisers just like we do for our schools. In this case, we would be helping save lives and that is a cause worth contributing to. Through the help of social media, young Indians in the United States can promote non-governmental organizations like the Rural Healthcare Foundation in order to aid the effort to improve healthcare for impoverished Indians. Through this, we can provide help to those in need despite being thousands of miles away.

All in all, the issue of inadequate healthcare, especially for impoverished Indians, is clearly one of the most pressing issues that India faces. Coupled with the current public health crisis, we now understand how crucial it is to have affordable healthcare for all Indians. As Indian diaspora in the United States, we can contribute to improving healthcare by donating to NGOs like the Rural Healthcare Foundation and bringing attention to this cause. High-quality and budget-friendly medical care is an essential right, and, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “It is health that is the real wealth, not pieces of gold and silver.”