Sachs: India suffers due to the lack of international help

[Guest guest]

Financial Express

January 8, 2003

Health Is Wealth, Literally

Increased public spending on health is not only socially correct, but it also

makes economic sense, says D Sachs

By Rajiv Tikoo

India needs to increase its public spending on health, says Sachs,

director, Earth Institute, Columbia University and chairman, Commission on

Macroeconomics and Health. He was in the capital in connection with the launch

of the India chapter of the commission on macroeconomics and health. The Union

ministers for health and finance are co-chairing the commission.

Though a free market economist, he believes that primary healthcare and

education are government domains. He emphasises that India needs to increase

spending from less than one per cent currently to about 4 per cent by the end of

the decade in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals to which India

is committed. The additional investment would also help India achieve more than

the nearly 6 per cent growth that the country has been aggregating over the past

few years. ‘‘If countries fail to invest in health, they suffer economically.

Investing in health is not only a good social policy, but it also makes good

economic sense,’’ he points out.

In fact, Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development

says that by 2015-2020 increased health investment of $66 billion per year above

the current spending would produce gains to the tune of about $360 billion.

Extending the coverage of crucial health services by scaling up investments in

health for the world’s poor would also save 8 million lives a year in the first

place, adds the report published by the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health.

Dr Sachs singles out AIDS for mention. He explains that controlling the spread

of AIDS is an example of what increased spending would achieve. It would prevent

the kind of scenario that Africa currently faces. The same would be true for

tuberculosis and malaria as well as illnesses of childhood and maternity. AIDS

has to be the first priority, though.

He explains, ‘‘Real work needs to be done on the AIDS front because if it gets

out of control, the situation can dramatically change for the worse. It’s

possible to get control over it today. There is till time, but not lots of it.’’

He hopes that the Indian commission and the changing political mood would be

able to assess the needs of the poor and budget for them. ‘‘This is the right

time for it. The economic growth is in pretty good shape despite a bad drought

year. A lot of the hard effort is already over for India. It can work on the

quality of growth now. We can see a big push on education underway. You can

combine that with a push on health, and in 10 years you could have a really

different social system.’’

Needless to say India needs to mobilise not only domestic resources, but also

international channels, he adds. He emphasises, ‘‘India suffers not only due to

the lack of enough domestic effort, but also due to the lack of enough

international help.’’ The Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria could be of some

help. Regretting that not many Indian proposals have been submitted to the fund

so far, he adds that the commission’s work should result in the ability of the

national and state governments to quantify their needs for health and to

generate good proposals for the fund to support.

In any case, he is hopeful about the future. ‘‘I am an internal India optimist.

I may be frustrated by the lack of progress, but the direction is right.’’ One

only hopes that he is right.

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