The tiny island nation of Maldives is now wary of Indian labourers who could spread tuberculosis (TB) and the dreaded HIV/AIDS among its people.
‘There are around 70,000 labourers in our country and the majority of them are from India. The problem is some of them coming to our country are infected with HIV/AIDS and TB,’ Maldives Deputy Minister of Health Abdul Azeez Yoosuf told IANS in an interview here.
‘In the last couple of years we have detected 90 cases of HIV/AIDS among these labourers and a few hundreds with drug resistant TB. We did not permit them to work in our country, as there is always a chance of their infecting our small population,’ said Yoosuf.
The health minister was in New Delhi to participate in the 61st meeting of the WHO Regional Committee for Southeast Asia.
The Maldives, which has a population of just 300,000, has a huge Indian presence. ‘We do screening of people but there is always a chance of others getting infected,’ Yoosuf said.
India contributes semi-skilled as well as skilled workforce to the the Maldives. Sixty percent of its doctors are Indians and nearly 70 percent of the country’s nursing staff is from India.
The minister said the Maldives lacks in skilled human resources and so could not stop the flow of workers from other countries.
Talking about the nation’s health indices, Yoosuf said it was set to achieve all the millennium development goals set by the United Nations before the 2015 deadline.
‘Unlike India, we spend seven percent of our GDP on health. The government sponsors at least 80 percent of health expenditure of our countrymen. The per capita health expenditure of the country is $300.
‘The maternal mortality ratio is 65 per 100,000 live births and the infant mortality ratio is 12 per 1,000 live births. We eradicated polio in 1981 and malaria in 1982. We have just 13 HIV/AIDS patients,’ the minister said.
In contrast, India is home to 2.5 million HIV/AIDS patients and 320,000 people (20,000 more than the population of the Maldives) die of TB every year in India. Mosquito borne diseases like malaria, dengue and chikungunya kill over 2,000 Indians and it’s among the top three countries in polio prevalence.
The government spends one percent of GDP on health, and nearly 83 percent of health expenditure by people are from their own pockets. The per capita health expenditure is less than $10 in India for a year.
The infant mortality ratio is 57 and maternal mortality is 301 in India. In Uttar Pradesh, which has one of the worst maternal mortality ratios, at least 517 women of every 100,000 die during pregnancy.
While in the Maldives there is a doctor for every 500-550 people, in India the ratio is 1: 16,000.
‘Practically, we know India is a big country and a global power. It has a huge population. But to improve its health indicators, it must invest more in the sector. It must give due priority to health, which at this point it does not look like doing,’ Yoosuf said.
Source: IANS
1 comment:
hmmm... thats concerning.
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