far below the required number. The lack of organized prehospital
care coupled with the lack of resources and the high
volume of patients that throng the government-run tertiary
care hospitals further compound problems [7].
This system is further complicated by the unregulated
expansion of private health care facilities in the country. The
average person today considers expenditure in these private
hospitals to receive health care far more acceptable than
submitting to the unprofessionalism rampant in many of the
public health care delivery areas. This has prompted an
anarchy of sorts, with the private hospitals dictating costs.
The lack of universal medical insurance only compounds
this issue, as do the limited economic resources. The federal
expenditure on health care in India was 8.8% of the GDP in
2003. The public expenditure was only 25%, whereas the
private expenditure was 75%, a practice very different from
developed nations like the USA [5]. The WHO also
estimated that the share of social insurance in India was
only about 4.2% [6]