Access to Health Services

Uttar Pradesh (U.P) is one such state which bears high population pressure along with very low social and economic development. It has the highest birth rate and the lowest life expectancy at birth among the major fifteen states of India. There are only limited studies focusing on U.P and these studies have overlooked the inequality at the regional and individual level. The present work is an attempt to fill this gap. This is based on secondary data sources and therefore also has some limitations owing to the lack of data and inadequacies in the data set itself. The objective of the book is to examine the role of public resources in determining the access to health care services that is the accessibility, affordability and acceptability and utilization of health care services across different administrative regions of U.P, namely, Eastern U.P, Central U.P, Bundelkhand and Western U.P. The present work concludes that there is an urgent need for revamping of public health delivery mechanism in U.P in general and Bundelkhand and eastern U.P in particular. Moreover the government need to ensure better functioning of public health centers by ensuring availability of health personnel, equipment and drugs, rather than overemphasizing physical infrastructure. The state cannot leave health sector to market forces simply because health sector is characterized by the asymmetry of information, existence of profit enterprise and externalities. This provides sufficient rationale for the government to participate actively and significantly to safeguard the well-being of the masses in general and of the poor and marginalized in particular.