In a report that was released by the United Nations Children's Fund, approximately 1.7 million children died of common diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia. For us to properly put that number into context thats over 4,560 children a day that die from common sicknesses. Even in per-capita India does poorly. It is reported that for every 1,000 children born in India each year and estimated 61 won't reach their 5th birthday.
Associated with poor sanitation, malnutrition and lack of access to basic healthcare services, this is an easily preventable disease that strikes mainly the poor.
Washing hands with soap, clean drinking water and putting an end to open defecation – which the report found is a major cause of diarrhea in South Asia – are easy preventative measures.
At the moment, this is an epidemic that has plateaued and not gotten worse. Currently, India is only spending 1.4% of its GDP on health care for it's citizens. While the effort has been to up that percentage to 2.5% over the years they have failed to hit that mark consistently.
How much is good health care worth to you? $8,233 per year? That’s how much the U.S. spends per person.
Worth it?
That figure is more than two-and-a-half times more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively rich European countries like France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. On a more global scale, it means U.S. health care costs now eat up 17.6 percent of GDP.