FY24 health budget ignores hard-learnt lessons from Covid pandemic

Compared to the West, our health budget is still far from 5% of GDP. We will be happy if this figure settles at 4%.

With the presidency of G20 started and having gone through the worst-ever health impact on the nation's health during the pandemic, expecting a decent health budget wasn't wrong. I was surprised to see the health outlay maintained at 2.1% of GDP, almost same as that of last year. This is disappointing, especially for healthcare professionals, as others would hardly understand the intricacies of this sector.

Though I had high expectations from the government for higher health outlay, after the Economic Survey tabled in the Parliament on 31 January, this figure was expected.

There is no denying the fact that health budgets have increased over the years from 0.3% of GDP in 1986 to around 1% in 2010; for FY 2019 it was 1.4% and for FY 2021 it was 1.6% and almost the same till FY 2021. There was a quantum jump to 2.2% of GDP for FY 2022 and that was mainly due to unplanned expenses incurred on Covid management. Last year it was 2.1% and the same is maintained this year too, though the increase in amount over last year's health allocation is 2.7%.

Any ministry with a low budget has no takers. The Ministries of Health, Social Welfare, Women Welfare, Tribal Welfare are described as adjustment ministries for representation to political parties and some communities. A cursory glance at the health ministers during 1980-2014 shows they were often changed faster than seasons. Of the 21 health ministers, eight were from minority communities, four were from Tamil Nadu's PMK party and three belonged to reserved classes.

Without casting any aspersions on them, some had performed extremely well with fullest dedication like A.R. Antulay, Dr Anbumani Ramadoss and Sushma Swaraj. Others were holding on till they got better portfolios. This has changed and we see stability since 2009, commensurate to increasing health budgets.