Saturday, April 15, 2006

Indian doctors working abroad


India devotes 5.1 percent of its GDP to health, ahead of Pakistan (4.0 percent) and Sri Lanka (3.7 percent) but behind China (5.4 percent), Brazil (7.6 percent), and the United States (15.6 percent). The striking fact about Indian health expenditures is that they are heavily in the private sector. Only 0.9 percent of the country’s GDP is spent on public-sector health programs, whereas 4.2 percent is private. India ranks 171st out of 175 countries in percentage of GDP spent in the public sector on health and 17th in private-sector spending.

Current data indicate that 59,095 Indian-educated physicians are working in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. They constitute 4.9 percent of the U.S. physician workforce and 10.9 percent of the U.K. physician workforce. Analysis of U.S. residency data indicates that there are about 5,000 graduates of Indian medical schools in U.S. training programs today, meaning that approximately 1,200 enter into the U.S. residency system each year.

From this very interesting take on Indian doctors studying and working abroad, and the impact of this phenomenon on India.

2 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Doesn't Sri Lanka have better health indicators than India? Otherwise the data is too much at a gross level for comparison. Besides what qualifies as private sector spending in India? Does it include only the Apollos and Wockhardts or does it include the informal sector as well? And how about Yeshaswini? http://www.hrudayalaya.com/Pages/IndiaToday.htm.

    We shd not worry too much about whether the private sector or the public sector delivers health services. Here again it is a question of allowing good money in for if you don't it will be driven out by the bad money. Witness construction, education and the movies, where markets have been mangled out of shape leaving the field largely to the unscrupulous.

  2. Anonymous said...

    dear budd
    as you have posted something like this on your blog one thing is for sure that u are not a doc and have nowhere been in the sllightest touch with the med fraternity. fortunately or unfortunately im an indian doctor who chose to stay behind in india. and im the only one of my school class who gets a paltry 15000 pm at the age 26 (though not the dumbest in my class and if im not being immodest id call myself in the better ones) while all my pals whether an engineer or a c.a or even those who just speak on the fone(call centres) earn a good enough 20000 to anywhere upwards. ooooooops and here are a few people on the net trying to tell that a few doctors from india have flown abroad , i think its still the tip of the iceberg.
    i caught ur blog for something else but got struck somewhere else
    regards
    pallav
    www.pallavpareek.blogspot.com