India, home to 1.4 billion people, has been plagued by having one in every of the best amounts of premature and preventable deaths in the world for several years. Over 50% of those premature deaths are caused by treatable diseases like malaria, pneumonia, and encephalitis.
The lack of accessibility to hospitals may be a huge factor for many of those deaths as India has one in all the bottom hospital beds per capita in the world. India ranks 155th in 167 countries with 3 beds for every 10,000 people. For Indians, about to a hospital is already a really difficult and arduous task.
Since most Indians live in rural India, where there aren’t many hospitals around just in case of emergencies, they’re impeded from access to basic healthcare. However, whether or not there’s a hospital nearby to treat the sick, lots of the equipment and beds are going to be in use and also the wait time is egregious.
According to a study, 74,000 deaths in 2016 were all easily treatable diseases that, if there have been more hospitals and better healthcare, would be drastically lower.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, these treatable diseases killed the coronavirus everywhere in India. An ischemic heart condition, alone, causes over 4,000 deaths a day in India although medicine and surgery can treat it. Children are the foremost stricken by India’s poor health infrastructure due to sanitation and malnutrition instead of actual diseases.
In America, 23,000 infants die each year, which may seem a large number, however, in 2018, 721,000 infants died across India. whether or not an infant survives the postnatal period, statistics showed that 882,000 children below the age of 5 died in 2018 which happened to be the very best worldwide.
Diseases don’t seem to be the sole problem for India’s children, another issue that’s as lethal and troublesome as diseases are traffic accidents. In India, 31 children die in traffic accidents on a daily basis. India’s ever-growing population is causing more problems than ever because roads are getting more populous with vehicles.
A total of 8% of all road accidents involve children, with Uttar Pradesh being the worst among them with 2,388 child deaths in 2019. Although India’s automobile Act 2019 stated that each child should wear a seatbelt and hold parents more in charge of their children, the amendment wasn’t fully implemented.
India has made great strides towards solving this mass epidemic of preventable deaths for youngsters, however, these solutions are only slightly, and temporarily, helping to cut back the amounts of deaths.
To continue fixing these issues, the govt will re-evaluate its health infrastructure and traffic laws to form India’s streets safer for all children. Until action is taken, India’s children will remain in jeopardy and vulnerable for several years to return.